Tag: Kurds

Trump Claims Poll Numbers Have Zoomed 17 Points As He Defends Abandonment Of Kurds

And the U.S. military “did not have ammunition” when he “took over,” he explained.

In a fractured White House news conference Monday, President Donald Trump claimed poll numbers supporting him have jumped 17 percentage points. That’s despite an impeachment inquiry and the uproar over his decision Sunday night to draw down U.S. troops as Kurdish allies face a Turkish incursion into Syria.

It’s not known which poll, if any, Trump was citing.

Trump also insisted that the U.S. military had no ammunition when he “took over” as commander in chief, and he characterized the Kurds and the Turks as “natural enemies.”

View the complete October 7 article by Mary Papenfuss on the Huffington Post website here.

Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman lays out 3 ‘perfectly plausible’ reasons for Trump’s betrayal of the Kurds — and they’re all horrifying

AlterNet logoThe Trump White House shocked the U.S. military and the defense community over the weekend with an announcement that U.S. forces, which have been working with Kurdish-led forces in northeastern Syria, will be pulling out — a decision that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wholeheartedly agrees with. And economist and veteran New York Times opinion columnist  Paul Krugman has three theories on the matter — all of which he asserts paint a troubling picture of Trump.

Monday on Twitter, Krugman posted, “So, did Trump just betray the Kurds because (a) He has business interests in Turkey, (b) Erdogan, being a brutal autocrat, is his kind of guy, (c) His boss Vladimir Putin told him to. Remarkable that all three stories are perfectly plausible.”

Trump, to be sure, has had very friendly relations with Erdogan. Prior to Erdogan’s presidency, Turkey was among the most liberal and democratic countries in the Islamic world. But it has taken an increasingly authoritarian turn under Erdogan, who Trump has repeatedly praised. Trump has been highly critical of long-time NATO allies like Germany and the U.K., but in 2018, he gave Erdogan a friendly fist bump and exalted him as the NATO member who “does things the right way.”

View the complete October 7 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.