After a long day of withering criticism from lawmakers and pundits, including many prominent conservatives, President Trump took to Twitter early Thursday morning to defend his abrupt decision to withdraw troops in Syria. In a tweet posted after midnight, Trump quoted Fox News host Laura Ingraham, who said that Trump “gets no credit” for his efforts in the Middle East. Unsurprisingly, Trump agreed with that assessment.
Trump’s late-night tweets came after his unexpected announcement on Wednesday that he’s ending the U.S. mission against the Islamic State in Syria and claiming victory over ISIS, which he called “my only reason for being there.” He made the decision over the objections of many of his top advisers, The Washington Post’s Karen DeYoung reported.
[U.S. troops to be pulled out of Syria quickly, White House says]
Hours later, a bipartisan group of six senators, including Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), one of the president’s closest allies in the Senate, sent a letter to Trump to ask him to reconsider and warning that withdrawing U.S. troops from Syria would “renew and embolden” ISIS in the Middle East. Late on Wednesday evening, Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and father to White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, pleaded with the president to think of his decision as a “betrayal to Kurds who have sacrificed and shed blood for Americans.”
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