- President Trump announced the killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of ISIS, in a strange manner.
- Trump described the operation as involving a lot of shooting and blasting, emphasizing the unconventional approach.
- Trump's decision to withdraw troops from the Syria-Turkey border has alarmed many, including his supporters on Fox & Friends.
- The troop withdrawal has led to Turkish forces invading the area, resulting in civilian casualties and displacement.
- Trump's decision has been widely criticized by politicians from both parties, including Lindsey Graham.
- The Kurds, who have been close allies to the US, were abandoned by Trump despite their significant contributions in fighting ISIS.
- Trump's decision seems to be influenced by a phone call with President Erdogan of Turkey, who wants to remove Kurdish forces from the border.

- Erdogan spoke to Trump about wanting to move against Kurdish forces in Syria
- Trump agreed to withdraw US troops, which has baffled many, including Mitt Romney
- The withdrawal was rushed, leaving behind equipment and supplies
- Over 100 ISIS prisoners escaped due to the abrupt withdrawal
- Turkish-backed Arab militias carried out alleged atrocities against Kurds
- Trump has tried to spin the situation as evidence of his tactical genius
- Russia's Putin has become a major player in Syria as a result of the power vacuum left by the US
- Kurdish fighters have now allied with Syria's Assad to avoid being wiped out
- Trump has empowered authoritarian leaders and praised Erdogan despite his actions
- The situation has damaged America's reputation in the Middle East
- Trump's impulsive decision-making and dictator fetish are concerning for the future.

John Oliver discusses the alarming decision to pull U.S. troops away from the border between Turkey and Syria.

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-♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ Donald Trump, the first president elected without any prior experience as a human being.

Now, this morning, Trump actually had some major news for us, that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of ISIS, had been killed.

And in classic Trump fashion, he was able to take something fundamentally positive and express it in the weirdest imaginable way.

Because here is how he described the operation.

They did a lot of shooting, and they did a lot of blasting.

You know, you think you go through the door.

If you're a normal person, you say, -"Knock, knock.

May I come in?" -$TIME OUT the fact is that they blasted their way into...

Do Trump only just learn how soldiers work?

They got these chameleon suits and big shooties and blasties.

No, they don't do that like a normal person.

They go through big, beautiful holes, and they shout, surprise.

A lot of people are learning about this for the first time.

Trump paid tribute to 1 crucial member of the team.

Our canine, as they call, I call it a dog.

Not like other people who call them furry lizards, or barking cats, or elephants but smaller and different.

To me, they are and forever will be dogs.

And look, while Baghdadi being gone is clearly great news, I'd actually like to focus tonight on a different decision Trump recently made in the same region, and 1 that I would argue could have more long-term ramifications, and which tells us much more about his decision-making as commander-in-chief.

It's a move that alarmed many, even his cheerleaders on Fox & Friends.

The United States is going to start pulling troops from Turkey's border in Syria.

The White House says it's clearing the way for Turkish troops to invade.

You know things are bad for Trump when he's even lost the support of Fox and Friends, a show whose actual slogan is, President Trump's dick is 17 inches long and thick as a tree trunk.

Now, very basically, what happened here was, Trump suddenly, and against the counsel of nearly all his advisors, pulled back troops along the Syria-Turkey border here, who had been working with Kurdish-led forces to contain ISIS.

Our presence there also helped protect Kurdish civilians from Turkey, ISIS, and the Syrian government.

And our troop withdrawal has had immediate consequences.

Turkish forces moved in almost as soon as we left, and over a hundred civilians have been killed, with nearly 200,000 displaced.

And This move has been nearly universally condemned.

It's been criticized by everyone, from Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, to Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham, the last of whom did not mince his words.

To abandon these people is a real shit show, and I'm hoping President Trump will reconsider.

He's about to make the biggest mistake of his presidency.

Although, to be fair, Lindsey Graham always looks like he's just said that exact phrase.

You know, I come into this Bojangles every Sunday.

People, this is a real shit show right here.

-♪ Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah ♪ -♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah ♪ And when the consequences of a decision are that dire, and the condemnation that widespread, it feels like it might be worth asking, what exactly happened?

And what might the ramifications be going forward?

Now, obviously, the situation in Syria is incredibly complex.

You can be forgiven for not fully understanding it.

What is much less forgivable is pretending to understand it when you clearly don't.

It's a very, semi-complicated, not too complicated if you're smart, But it's a semi-complicated problem.

I'd forgotten that Trump spent the 90s as the senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and not, as I clearly wrongly remembered, losing all his dad's money and trying unsuccessfully to bang Madonna.

I forgot that, because clearly I'm not smart like him.

Look, there are more factions involved here than we have time to cover, but the important group to know about are the Kurds.

There are about 30 million of them in the region, spread mostly across Syria, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran.

They are the largest ethnic group in the world without a country of their own.

So, they're a minority wherever they live, putting them in a precarious situation.

But it's important to know that they have been close military allies with America in the past, which is why it was so odd to hear Trump justify abandoning them like this.

Somebody wrote in a very, very powerful article today.

They didn't help us in the Second World War, they didn't help us with Normandy as an example, they mentioned names of different battles.

They were there, but they're there to help us with their land, and that's a different thing.

You are mad because the Kurds didn't help the U.S.

Quick question, the fuck does that have to do with anything?

There were also no Kurds at the Battle of Gettysburg, or helping us get to the moon, or suspiciously Kurd-less missions.

Neil could have used their help holding his ladder.

The fact is, the Kurds have fought multiple times to help America, including in both the Gulf and Iraq wars.

Meaning, by the way, the Kurds fought with the U.S.

Military in at least 2 more wars than Donald Trump ever fucking did.

More recently, we turned to the Kurds in 2015 to help us contain ISIS in Syria.

We provided training and air support, and they were the front line troops doing the close fighting.

Military trusted their allies so completely that the Kurds were soon calling in American airstrikes.

The Kurds would point at something and we would blow it up.

If I had that power, to put it mildly, there would be no more Applebee's.

Now, the Kurds' sacrifice in that fight was significant.

While at least 6 Americans died fighting in that region, the Kurds suffered 11,000 casualties.

And that alliance is 1 of the reasons why ISIS, which controlled this much territory in Syria in 2015, has since lost all of it.

In fact, a key reason that we were able to take out al-Baghdadi was thanks to intelligence from the Kurds.

So they fought bravely with us, and the situation in northeastern Syria was relatively stable.

And then, in an instant, Trump threw that all away.

Well, to hear him tell it, it's actually pretty simple.

Okay, first, since when does Trump avoid areas of sand and death?

-...where the average age is opposed to the Civil Rights Act.

--AUDIENCE LAUGHS, APPLAUDS The guy loves sand and death.

But that is part of his reductive argument that America should not be stuck in endless wars, and that the troops should come home, which is at least a real, coherent, foreign policy position.

The problem is, the troops aren't actually coming home.

Since May, we've actually increased the number of them deployed to the Middle East by 14,000.

And just days after his Syria decision, Trump made a big announcement.

We are sending troops and other things to the Middle East to help Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia, at my request, has agreed to pay us for everything we're doing.

Okay, so 1, this probably won't surprise you, they have not agreed to that.

And 2, even if they had, that would be a weird thing to brag about.

Military doesn't charge for protection because it isn't a mercenary force.

Seal carries arrows and an olive branch, not arrows and a credit card reader.

But the idea that we'll send troops to a country that pays us is definitely in keeping with Trump's short-term, purely transactional worldview.

It's the same philosophy that's led him to suggest withdrawing troops from South Korea because he thinks they're not paying us enough, or to threaten to pull out of NATO because he thinks other countries aren't contributing their fair share.

So look, I'm sorry, Kurds, unless you can give Donald Trump something he wants, like, I don't know, Hunter Biden's email password or Melania Trump's phone number, you can apparently...

So if this wasn't done out of some grand principle, why did it happen and happen so suddenly?

Well, it seems Trump's decision followed a phone call with President Erdogan of Turkey.

And a little context here, for years, Turkey has struggled with a Kurdish militant group called the PKK, who are unquestionably extreme.

The State Department considers them a terrorist group.

And Erdogan firmly believes that a Kurdish group we've been working with are basically the same as the PKK.

And he wants them either dead, or nowhere near the Turkish border.

We've been basically managing to balance our interest in containing ISIS with our need to manage Erdogan's concerns for years now.

It has been difficult, but we've basically done it.

Until it seems, Erdogan got on the phone with Trump earlier this month and told him he wanted to move against Kurdish forces in Syria, and Trump essentially said, -"Fine, we'll run away then." -$5,000.

And that is a decision that has baffled many, including Mitt Romney.

Erdogan basically said, we're coming in, get out of the way.

Much like the rest of America discovering this week that your secret Twitter account was named Pierre Delecto.

You are very much not reading that wrong.

Incidentally, Pierre Delecto sounds like a name that would have come up in Pulp Fiction if that conversation about French McDonald's had kept going.

In France, they called the quarter pounder a royal with cheese, and they called Grimace Pierre delectable.

--LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE --But it is truly troubling the sheer extent to which Trump has just rolled over for Erdogan.

He called the Kurds, who remember, have repeatedly fought and died alongside the U.S.

And while at 1 point Trump did apparently try to prevent a Kurdish slaughter, Erdogan seemed to feel pretty comfortable ignoring him.

Yesterday, a letter surfaced from President Trump to Erdogan.

He warned against a Turkish military offensive and said, in decidedly undiplomatic language, don't be a tough guy, don't be a fool.

Erdogan reportedly threw away the letter and launched the assault into Syria the same day.

He didn't just ignore him, Erdogan threw away a piece of mail that day.

He probably also throws away birthday cards directly after reading them, like a monster, instead of keeping them on the kitchen counter for a week out of a sense of irrational guilt, and then throwing them out, because what else are you going to do?

It's a piece of trash, but not for a week.

But Even if you think Trump was right to withdraw troops from the area, it clearly makes sense to do it in a way that will cause the least damage to the region, your allies, and your own interests.

Our withdrawal was so rushed, we had to leave a lot behind.

Just watch this Russian reporter wandering around a U.S.

Base just hours after the troops had left.

So, not only Did we dump our allies without warning?

We left a refrigerator full of free Coke for whoever took our place.

Although, maybe the most interesting part of that video was watching the reporter blatantly ignore the fridge full of Pepsi right next to it.

Because even to Russian reporters, the answer to, is Pepsi okay?

--LAUGHTER --So, so basically, America left the region the same way you leave a party right after you clogged the toilet.

Quickly leaving everything behind and forcing someone else to deal with all the shit.

And the consequences to this have been dire.

For starters, Kurdish-led forces were in charge of guarding many ISIS prisoners, and by leaving so abruptly, we forced them to abandon their posts to fight for their lives.

And the thing that any six-year-old could tell you what happened next happened next.

The White House has tried to downplay how many of the 10,000 ISIS prisoners in Syria may have escaped.

There were a few that got out, a small number, relatively speaking, and they've been largely recaptured.

But that's not what the president's special envoy for Syria, James Jeffrey, said on Wednesday.

We would say that the number is now over 100.

Over 100 ISIS prisoners escaped, and we don't know where they are.

Or at least, they don't know where they are because I have a surprise for everyone here tonight.

Ladies and gentlemen, the ISIS prisoners!

Anyway, as I was saying, over a hundred ISIS prisoners have escaped, and we have no idea where they are.

And the thing is, it gets even worse here.

Because when you give a green light to an authoritarian, terrible things can happen, and terrible things very much did.

We saw for the first time alleged atrocities carried out by Turkish-backed Arab militias.

This video today appears to show Arab militias executing a Kurd by the roadside as they shout, -"Allahu Akbar." -$$%&!

That is horrifying, a potential war crime, and completely, completely avoidable.

Yet, astonishingly, Even in the face of scenes like that, and over 100 civilian deaths, remember, Trump has actually tried to spin the carnage as evidence of his tactical genius.

I said, they're gonna have to fight a little while.

Sometimes you have to let them fight a little while.

Then people find out how tough the fighting is.

It's like 2 kids in a lot, you gotta let them fight and then you pull them apart.

That is not true for Syria, And it's also not true for kids, you weird monster!

Trump just revealed what we've essentially always known.

He's not just a shitty president and a shitty person, he's a shitty dad.

Thank God he never had to raise any children.

Thankfully, the worst of the violence appears to have abated, at least for the moment, but that is largely because after the U.S.

Left a power vacuum in the region, another major player stepped in.

Russia's Vladimir Putin tonight became the new kingmaker in Syria, as he and Turkey's President Erdogan carved up the country between them.

Putin now has a larger foothold in the region, and the Kurdish fighters, who were once allied with us for so long, have now flipped sides and struck a deal with Syria's Bashar al-Assad to avoid being wiped out.

So, Trump has made a snap decision where the big winners are Putin, Erdogan, Assad, and ISIS.

And that is a group that you do not want to be friendly with.

Although, I actually believe they were all at a Cowboys game with Ellen this weekend.

Look, look, look, we're all different, and that's okay.

But Trump may not be bothered particularly that he's empowered so many authoritarian leaders because we know he has a soft spot for them.

In fact, even after Erdogan disregarded Trump's warnings and launched a bloody campaign, once he'd agreed to a temporary ceasefire, Trump went straight back to effusively praising him.

I just want to thank and congratulate, though, President Erdogan.

He's a friend of mine, and I'm glad we didn't have a problem, because frankly, he's a hell of a leader, and he's a tough man, he's a strong man, and he did the right thing.

That's not a fucking compliment, that's a synonym for dictator.

And that image might actually sum up the insanity of this whole situation.

The president, thinking he's projecting strength, obsequiously fawning over an authoritarian for deigning to pause a slaughter that the president himself had enabled.

And look, I know that it is so easy to criticize anyone's policy in this region.

Any move is going to have ripple effects intended or otherwise.

Syria was 1 of the biggest problem spots in Obama's foreign policy, so I'm not saying that it is easy or even possible to get a situation this difficult completely right.

But it's genuinely hard to get it this wrong.

We took a fundamentally stable situation, betrayed a strategically vital ally, and immensely damaged our reputation.

-...at American troops ordered out of Syria.

These images tonight show 1 of the lowest moments of America's reputation in the Middle East in years.

1 of the lowest moments of America's reputation in the Middle East in years.

1 of the lowest moments of America's reputation in the Middle East.

And remember, a guy in the Middle East once took off his shoe, threw it at the president, And then, while the people around him watched, took off his other shoe and also threw that at the president.

Look, the more you look at all of this, the more worrying it gets, because this was an unforced error.

Trump chose to do something this sudden, this impetuous, and this damaging.

So imagine what he might do in a crisis not of his own making.

That is 1 of the many terrifying things about the prospect of a second term, or indeed, the remaining year of this first 1.

Because there is nothing more dangerous than someone with a massive amount of power, a dictator fetish, and an inability to think in anything but transactional terms.

And, who is stupid enough to think that this is all not too complicated if you are smart.


Speaker 0: -♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ Donald Trump, the first president elected without any prior experience as a human being. Now, this morning, Trump actually had some major news for us, that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of ISIS, had been killed. And in classic Trump fashion, he was able to take something fundamentally positive and express it in the weirdest imaginable way. Because here is how he described the operation.

Speaker 1: They did a lot of shooting, and they did a lot of blasting. Even not going through the front door. You know, you think you go through the door. If you're a normal person, you say, -"Knock, knock. May I come in?" -$TIME OUT the fact is that they blasted their way into...

The house. They had a beautiful big hole

Speaker 2: and they ran in and

Speaker 1: they got everybody by surprise.

Speaker 0: What are you doing? Do Trump only just learn how soldiers work? Listen, these guys are amazing. They got these chameleon suits and big shooties and blasties. They don't say, knock, knock.

No, they don't do that like a normal person. They go through big, beautiful holes, and they shout, surprise. A lot of people are learning about this for the first time. This is new to a lot of people. But wait, because you haven't yet heard.

Trump paid tribute to 1 crucial member of the team.

Speaker 1: Our canine, as they call, I call it a dog. A beautiful dog. A talented dog.

Speaker 0: That's right. I call them dogs. Not like other people who call them furry lizards, or barking cats, or elephants but smaller and different. To me, they are and forever will be dogs. That's my term for them that I made up.

And look, while Baghdadi being gone is clearly great news, I'd actually like to focus tonight on a different decision Trump recently made in the same region, and 1 that I would argue could have more long-term ramifications, and which tells us much more about his decision-making as commander-in-chief. It's a move that alarmed many, even his cheerleaders on Fox & Friends.

Speaker 3: The United States is going to start pulling troops from Turkey's border in Syria. That announcement last night. Stunning. The White House says it's clearing the way for Turkish troops to invade. A disastrous series of events.

I hope the president will rethink this.

Speaker 0: Wow. You know things are bad for Trump when he's even lost the support of Fox and Friends, a show whose actual slogan is, President Trump's dick is 17 inches long and thick as a tree trunk. That's the real slogan. Now, very basically, what happened here was, Trump suddenly, and against the counsel of nearly all his advisors, pulled back troops along the Syria-Turkey border here, who had been working with Kurdish-led forces to contain ISIS. And it wasn't just that.

Our presence there also helped protect Kurdish civilians from Turkey, ISIS, and the Syrian government. And our troop withdrawal has had immediate consequences. Turkish forces moved in almost as soon as we left, and over a hundred civilians have been killed, with nearly 200,000 displaced. It has been a catastrophe. And This move has been nearly universally condemned.

It's been criticized by everyone, from Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, to Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham, the last of whom did not mince his words.

Speaker 4: To abandon these people is a real shit show, and I'm hoping President Trump will reconsider. He's about to make the biggest mistake of his presidency. I hope he adjusts.

Speaker 0: A shit show. Although, to be fair, Lindsey Graham always looks like he's just said that exact phrase. You know, I come into this Bojangles every Sunday. Every Sunday. And I have never seen service like this.

My chicken is damp. My biscuit is cold. My day is ruined. People, this is a real shit show right here. I will take my order to go.

To go! I am flustered! -♪ Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah ♪ -♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah ♪ And when the consequences of a decision are that dire, and the condemnation that widespread, it feels like it might be worth asking, what exactly happened? Why did Trump decide to do it? And what might the ramifications be going forward?

And let's start with what happened. Now, obviously, the situation in Syria is incredibly complex. You can be forgiven for not fully understanding it. What is much less forgivable is pretending to understand it when you clearly don't.

Speaker 1: It's a very, semi-complicated, not too complicated if you're smart, But it's a semi-complicated problem.

Speaker 0: Oh, good. It's only semi-complicated, is it? I'd forgotten that Trump spent the 90s as the senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and not, as I clearly wrongly remembered, losing all his dad's money and trying unsuccessfully to bang Madonna. I forgot that, because clearly I'm not smart like him. Look, there are more factions involved here than we have time to cover, but the important group to know about are the Kurds.

There are about 30 million of them in the region, spread mostly across Syria, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran. They are the largest ethnic group in the world without a country of their own. So, they're a minority wherever they live, putting them in a precarious situation. But it's important to know that they have been close military allies with America in the past, which is why it was so odd to hear Trump justify abandoning them like this.

Speaker 1: Somebody wrote in a very, very powerful article today. They didn't help us in the Second World War, they didn't help us with Normandy as an example, they mentioned names of different battles. They were there, but they're there to help us with their land, and that's a different thing.

Speaker 0: Hold on, let me just get this straight. You are mad because the Kurds didn't help the U.S. Fight in Normandy? Quick question, the fuck does that have to do with anything? There were also no Kurds at the Battle of Gettysburg, or helping us get to the moon, or suspiciously Kurd-less missions.

Where were the Kurds? Neil could have used their help holding his ladder. Oh, they were all busy, were they? All of them. But...

The fact is, the Kurds have fought multiple times to help America, including in both the Gulf and Iraq wars. Meaning, by the way, the Kurds fought with the U.S. Military in at least 2 more wars than Donald Trump ever fucking did. -$20 billion. -$20 billion.

More recently, we turned to the Kurds in 2015 to help us contain ISIS in Syria. We provided training and air support, and they were the front line troops doing the close fighting. And it was a very tight partnership.

Speaker 3: The U.S. Military trusted their allies so completely that the Kurds were soon calling in American airstrikes.

Speaker 0: It's true. The Kurds would point at something and we would blow it up. That's an incredible level of trust. If I had that power, to put it mildly, there would be no more Applebee's. They know what they did.

They know what they did. Now, the Kurds' sacrifice in that fight was significant. While at least 6 Americans died fighting in that region, the Kurds suffered 11,000 casualties. And that alliance is 1 of the reasons why ISIS, which controlled this much territory in Syria in 2015, has since lost all of it. In fact, a key reason that we were able to take out al-Baghdadi was thanks to intelligence from the Kurds.

So they fought bravely with us, and the situation in northeastern Syria was relatively stable. And then, in an instant, Trump threw that all away. So why? Why did he do that? Well, to hear him tell it, it's actually pretty simple.

Speaker 2: I don't want to be

Speaker 1: in Syria forever. It's sand, and it's death.

Speaker 0: Okay, first, since when does Trump avoid areas of sand and death? He owns a golf club in Florida... -...where the average age is opposed to the Civil Rights Act. --AUDIENCE LAUGHS, APPLAUDS The guy loves sand and death. But that is part of his reductive argument that America should not be stuck in endless wars, and that the troops should come home, which is at least a real, coherent, foreign policy position.

The problem is, the troops aren't actually coming home. Since May, we've actually increased the number of them deployed to the Middle East by 14,000. And just days after his Syria decision, Trump made a big announcement.

Speaker 2: We are sending troops and other things to the Middle East to help Saudi Arabia. But are you ready? Saudi Arabia, at my request, has agreed to pay us for everything we're doing. That's a first.

Speaker 0: Okay, so 1, this probably won't surprise you, they have not agreed to that. And 2, even if they had, that would be a weird thing to brag about. The U.S. Military doesn't charge for protection because it isn't a mercenary force. It's the reason the eagle on the U.S.

Seal carries arrows and an olive branch, not arrows and a credit card reader. But the idea that we'll send troops to a country that pays us is definitely in keeping with Trump's short-term, purely transactional worldview. It's the same philosophy that's led him to suggest withdrawing troops from South Korea because he thinks they're not paying us enough, or to threaten to pull out of NATO because he thinks other countries aren't contributing their fair share. So look, I'm sorry, Kurds, unless you can give Donald Trump something he wants, like, I don't know, Hunter Biden's email password or Melania Trump's phone number, you can apparently... Expect fuck all from him.

So if this wasn't done out of some grand principle, why did it happen and happen so suddenly? Well, it seems Trump's decision followed a phone call with President Erdogan of Turkey. And a little context here, for years, Turkey has struggled with a Kurdish militant group called the PKK, who are unquestionably extreme. The State Department considers them a terrorist group. And Erdogan firmly believes that a Kurdish group we've been working with are basically the same as the PKK.

And he wants them either dead, or nowhere near the Turkish border. But this isn't actually a new problem. We've been basically managing to balance our interest in containing ISIS with our need to manage Erdogan's concerns for years now. It has been difficult, but we've basically done it. Until it seems, Erdogan got on the phone with Trump earlier this month and told him he wanted to move against Kurdish forces in Syria, and Trump essentially said, -"Fine, we'll run away then." -$5,000.

And that is a decision that has baffled many, including Mitt Romney.

Speaker 5: Erdogan basically said, we're coming in, get out of the way. And America, blinked. Is... Am I reading that wrong?

Speaker 0: No, Mitt. You're actually not. Much like the rest of America discovering this week that your secret Twitter account was named Pierre Delecto. That's real. You are very much not reading that wrong.

Incidentally, Pierre Delecto sounds like a name that would have come up in Pulp Fiction if that conversation about French McDonald's had kept going. In France, they called the quarter pounder a royal with cheese, and they called Grimace Pierre delectable. --LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE --But it is truly troubling the sheer extent to which Trump has just rolled over for Erdogan. He called the Kurds, who remember, have repeatedly fought and died alongside the U.S. Military, no angels.

And while at 1 point Trump did apparently try to prevent a Kurdish slaughter, Erdogan seemed to feel pretty comfortable ignoring him.

Speaker 6: Yesterday, a letter surfaced from President Trump to Erdogan. He warned against a Turkish military offensive and said, in decidedly undiplomatic language, don't be a tough guy, don't be a fool. Erdogan reportedly threw away the letter and launched the assault into Syria the same day.

Speaker 0: Holy shit! He didn't just ignore him, Erdogan threw away a piece of mail that day. That alone is ice cold. He probably also throws away birthday cards directly after reading them, like a monster, instead of keeping them on the kitchen counter for a week out of a sense of irrational guilt, and then throwing them out, because what else are you going to do? Frame it?

Of course not. It's a piece of trash, but not for a week. But Even if you think Trump was right to withdraw troops from the area, it clearly makes sense to do it in a way that will cause the least damage to the region, your allies, and your own interests. But Trump did none of that. Our withdrawal was so rushed, we had to leave a lot behind.

Just watch this Russian reporter wandering around a U.S. Base just hours after the troops had left.

Speaker 5: They left here yesterday at 4 a.m. Look here. I am currently at the U.S. Kitchen. American soldiers used to eat here.

The fridge is full.

Speaker 0: -♪ ♪

Speaker 1: Coca-Cola.

Speaker 0: -♪ ♪ Wow. So, not only Did we dump our allies without warning? We left a refrigerator full of free Coke for whoever took our place. Although, maybe the most interesting part of that video was watching the reporter blatantly ignore the fridge full of Pepsi right next to it. Because even to Russian reporters, the answer to, is Pepsi okay?

Is a resounding, n-yep. --LAUGHTER --So, so basically, America left the region the same way you leave a party right after you clogged the toilet. Quickly leaving everything behind and forcing someone else to deal with all the shit. And the consequences to this have been dire. For starters, Kurdish-led forces were in charge of guarding many ISIS prisoners, and by leaving so abruptly, we forced them to abandon their posts to fight for their lives.

And the thing that any six-year-old could tell you what happened next happened next.

Speaker 6: The White House has tried to downplay how many of the 10,000 ISIS prisoners in Syria may have escaped.

Speaker 2: There were a few that got out, a small number, relatively speaking, and they've been largely recaptured.

Speaker 6: But that's not what the president's special envoy for Syria, James Jeffrey, said on Wednesday.

Speaker 5: We would say that the number is now over 100. We do not know where they are.

Speaker 0: It's true. Over 100 ISIS prisoners escaped, and we don't know where they are. Or at least, they don't know where they are because I have a surprise for everyone here tonight. Ladies and gentlemen, the ISIS prisoners! -♪ ♪ -♪ Oh, fuck!

Oh, fuck! Oh, fuck, where are they? Oh, fuck! Oh, shit! Oh, fucking fuck!

Oh, fuck! They were supposed to be... Oh, fuck! Why did we give them shovels?! -'Cause...

Doesn't make any sense. -'Cause... Anyway, as I was saying, over a hundred ISIS prisoners have escaped, and we have no idea where they are. And the thing is, it gets even worse here. Because when you give a green light to an authoritarian, terrible things can happen, and terrible things very much did.

Speaker 3: We saw for the first time alleged atrocities carried out by Turkish-backed Arab militias.

Speaker 0: Allah Akbar!

Speaker 3: This video today appears to show Arab militias executing a Kurd by the roadside as they shout, -"Allahu Akbar." -$$%&! And proudly saying, -"Film me.

Speaker 1: Film me."

Speaker 0: -$$%&! That is horrifying, a potential war crime, and completely, completely avoidable. Yet, astonishingly, Even in the face of scenes like that, and over 100 civilian deaths, remember, Trump has actually tried to spin the carnage as evidence of his tactical genius.

Speaker 2: It was unconventional what I did. I said, they're gonna have to fight a little while. Sometimes you have to let them fight a little while. Then people find out how tough the fighting is. Sometimes you have to let them fight.

It's like 2 kids in a lot, you gotta let them fight and then you pull them apart.

Speaker 0: The fuck are you talking about? That is not true for Syria, And it's also not true for kids, you weird monster! Trump just revealed what we've essentially always known. He's not just a shitty president and a shitty person, he's a shitty dad. Thank God he never had to raise any children.

Now... Now, thankfully... Thankfully, the worst of the violence appears to have abated, at least for the moment, but that is largely because after the U.S. Left a power vacuum in the region, another major player stepped in.

Speaker 3: Russia's Vladimir Putin tonight became the new kingmaker in Syria, as he and Turkey's President Erdogan carved up the country between them.

Speaker 0: Exactly. Putin now has a larger foothold in the region, and the Kurdish fighters, who were once allied with us for so long, have now flipped sides and struck a deal with Syria's Bashar al-Assad to avoid being wiped out. So, Trump has made a snap decision where the big winners are Putin, Erdogan, Assad, and ISIS. And that is a group that you do not want to be friendly with. Although, I actually believe they were all at a Cowboys game with Ellen this weekend.

Look, look, look, we're all different, and that's okay. But Trump may not be bothered particularly that he's empowered so many authoritarian leaders because we know he has a soft spot for them. In fact, even after Erdogan disregarded Trump's warnings and launched a bloody campaign, once he'd agreed to a temporary ceasefire, Trump went straight back to effusively praising him.

Speaker 2: I just want to thank and congratulate, though, President Erdogan. He's a friend of mine, and I'm glad we didn't have a problem, because frankly, he's a hell of a leader, and he's a tough man, he's a strong man, and he did the right thing.

Speaker 0: Yeah, he's a strong man. He's a strong man. That's not a fucking compliment, that's a synonym for dictator. And that image might actually sum up the insanity of this whole situation. The president, thinking he's projecting strength, obsequiously fawning over an authoritarian for deigning to pause a slaughter that the president himself had enabled.

And look, I know that it is so easy to criticize anyone's policy in this region. It is very complicated. Any move is going to have ripple effects intended or otherwise. Syria was 1 of the biggest problem spots in Obama's foreign policy, so I'm not saying that it is easy or even possible to get a situation this difficult completely right. But it's genuinely hard to get it this wrong.

We took a fundamentally stable situation, betrayed a strategically vital ally, and immensely damaged our reputation. Just watch how the Kurds treated a U.S. Convoy leaving the country.

Speaker 3: Kurdish civilians, until now, close U.S. Allies, throwing potatoes...

Speaker 2: Hello, America!

Speaker 3: ...And yelling insults... -...at American troops ordered out of Syria. These images tonight show 1 of the lowest moments of America's reputation in the Middle East in years.

Speaker 0: Think about what he just said there.

Speaker 1: 1 of the lowest moments of America's reputation in the Middle East in years. Think about what he just

Speaker 0: said there. 1 of the lowest moments of America's reputation in the Middle East. And remember, a guy in the Middle East once took off his shoe, threw it at the president, And then, while the people around him watched, took off his other shoe and also threw that at the president. Look, the more you look at all of this, the more worrying it gets, because this was an unforced error. Trump chose to do something this sudden, this impetuous, and this damaging.

And he's just not going to change. So imagine what he might do in a crisis not of his own making. That is 1 of the many terrifying things about the prospect of a second term, or indeed, the remaining year of this first 1. Because there is nothing more dangerous than someone with a massive amount of power, a dictator fetish, and an inability to think in anything but transactional terms. And, who is stupid enough to think that this is all not too complicated if you are smart.

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Trump & Syria: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

00:00 - 10:01

09:51 - 19:32