>> Been suggested that Turkey may have called America's bluff, telling the President they
were coming no matter what we did.
If that's so, we should know it.
For it would tell us a great deal about how we should deal with Turkey now and in the
future.
>> That's Senator Mitt Romney, who gave a fiery speech in regard to Donald Trump's abrupt
decision to pull US troops out of northern Syria, effectively abandoning our Kurdish
allies.
And he floated a theory that's actually been confirmed now, that Turkey was going to invade
Northern Syria, they were going to go through with a military operation whether the Americans
wanted it or not.
And so Erdogan might have been attempting to call Donald Trump's bluff.
But here's what ended up happening.
Donald Trump folded immediately and pulled the troops out, which led the way for the
Turks to invade.
Now I wanna give you a little more from Mitt Romney's speech.
And then I'm gonna tell you how this theory has been confirmed.
Take a look.
>> Assuming for the sake of understanding that getting out of endless wars was the logic
for the decision, why would we take action so precipitously?
Why would we not warn our ally, the Kurds, of what we're about to do?
Why would we not give them time to also withdraw or perhaps to dig in to defend themselves?
Clearly the Turks had a heads up because they were able to start bombing within mere hours.
I simply don't understand why the administration did not explain in advance to Erdogan that
it's unacceptable for Turkey to attack an American ally.
Are we so weak and so inept diplomatically that Turkey forced the hand of the United
States of America?
Turkey?
>> Okay, I got it.
>> This is not about that.
All right, so there's two things to say here.
One is, this is actually a much more measured intelligent response to Donald Trump and a
far better critique than what Mitch McConnell did in an op-ed today.
>> Agreed.
>> Mitch McConnell argued for endless wars, on behalf of endless wars.
Here Mitt Romney's saying look, even if you're against endless wars, this is not the right
way to do it.
That's actually totally true.
And his points are fairly undeniable.
Even assuming Turkey and Kurds are both our allies, and that is a fair assumption, they
are both our allies, why advantage one over the other?
Why not give the Kurds a warning as well?
So almost everything he said there is correct in that sense, and it's interesting coming
from a Republican.
That actually sounds like an intelligent progressive critique of the president, so I appreciate
that.
The last part I didn't appreciate as much.
>> Turkey?
>> Turkey, right, I hear you.
But look, all kidding aside, Turkey, there is something wrong, there's one thing wrong
with the media reporting on this.
Now there's because everybody's opposed to Donald Trump there's this drive to paint the
Turks as if they are our enemies.
That is not productive either.
They are the second largest army in NATO.
That is our top alliance.
And they're a top 20 economy in the world.
And I saw, I think it was New York Times today dismissed Turkey, or Washington Post.
I'm sorry, I forget which one.
Dismissed Turkey as a small little country.
It's got arguably top ten military in the world.
So this tone of the Turks are our enemies or that they are minor and piddling, etc.,
is not productive diplomatically.
Cuz I can tell you having known a lot of folks in Turkey that that drives them nuts and then
drives more animosity towards America.
And last part of that is not acknowledging that Turkey does actually have a terrorism
problem from the PKK is problematic and does not do justice to the facts.
See we're principled on this show.
So I'm opposed to the PKK terrorism in Turkey, obviously, as I'm opposed to terrorism that
happens inside Israel from Hamas, Hezbollah or anyone else.
But that does not justify the occupation of the West Bank or Gaza Strip.
It also does not justify the occupation of Northern Syria.
So that is a principled position to take.
Instead of saying Turkey and the terrorism they suffer is no big deal, or the occupation
is no big deal.
No, they're both big deals.
We need to have a smart strategy on how to deal with all that instead of taking one side
abruptly or irrationally.
>> Well, I just want to do a quick media critique and not get off on a tangent.
But look, I think this is the reason why Americans tend to see issues like this as black or white,
because the media reports things as black or white.
Nothing is reported with the appropriate nuance, mostly because the experts that go on these
shows tend to be former politicians, current politicians.
People who have a black and white view of these wars and these conflicts to begin with.
So you're right.
I mean, PKK has conducted terrorist attacks in Turkey.
But the way that it's being reported makes it appear as though, all Kurds are good or
all Kurds are bad.
I mean, it's the same thing that we got when there would be a terrorist attack, right?
>> Yeah, the actions in my experience in analysis of it, of the Turkish g government against
the Kurdish people are disproportionately large compared to the PKK's activities.
But that said, I do hear what you're saying, Cenk.
I think that whether Mitt Romney knows this or not, he is at least at the minimum, intentionally
deluding people about what Turkey is.
And it gets to the much larger story to both your points.
Why is our media, our mainstream media at least, not actually educating us on what Turkey
is, the history of Turkey at least on some basic level that can keep people's attention,
and the history of Kurds and Kurdistan?
Which the Kurdish people span multiple nations, Syria, Iraq and Turkey.
So why is that not happening?
And then the real question.
There's one interesting sort of tantalizing point that I feel like Romney brings up here,
which is what is Erdogan's leverage over Trump?
That's an interesting question that just came up.
>> Right, so there might be leverage we don't know.
There are multiple members of Congress, and this is bipartisan effort, to get that phone
conversation between Erdogan and Donald Trump released to Congress, not necessarily to the
public.
Because if there is some sort of deal made that could be illegal or against the best
interest of Americans, they want to know about it.
But let's also note that Cenk was 100% right.
He predicted that the ceasefire wasn't actually a ceasefire, and today that has been confirmed.
There has not been a ceasefire.
There's still brutality toward Kurds in northern Syria.
And so that's where we're at, and the foreign minister in Turkey had already foreshadowed
this in a quote that Cenk read during the story yesterday.
But I do wanna go back to the the notion that Erdogan told Trump we're going in no matter
what.
That was also confirmed by Mark Esper.
So Mark Esper is the the Secretary of Defense, former Secretary of Defense?
>> No, current secretary.
>> I'm sorry, current Secretary of Defense.
And in an effort to defend Donald Trump, here's what he told Chris Wallace, A2.
>> The first thing that we understood, I've understood from my counterpart, Secretary
Pompeo, from his and certainly from President Erdogan is they were fully committed to doing
this regardless of what we did.
We thought it was prudent, it was my recommendation.
I know the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff agreed as well we should not put US
forces in between a Turkish advance.
We're talking less than 50, more like two dozen, there is no way they could stop 15,000
Turks from proceeding south.
>> It's as if the United States is not capable of doing anything.
All we could do is let them come in.
>> Yeah, so that proves Romney's point completely.
So basically saying either Turkey bullied us into withdrawing, or they just bluffed
and and Trump folded when they bluffed.
Because if Erdogan says, okay, I'm coming in no matter what.
And we say no, you're not.
And we're gonna keep our troops there and you're gonna have to fire on American troops.
Erdogan is a tough guy and he has done unbelievable things in the past.
And I say that both the good and the terrible sense of it, and he's shot at Russian plane,
which was unimaginable before.
So if there's one world leader who might roll in anyway even with American troops there,
it might be him.
But even so, that would be one of the boldest moves I have seen in my lifetime.
Cuz if you shot and killed American troops that were standing in the way, you would have
massive, massive trouble.
So likely it was a bluff.
And Trump, cuz he's not good at the Art of the Deal, immediately folded.
>> Donald Trump immediately folds especially when it comes to strong men.
Erdogan is a strong man and Donald Trump is a coward, and he is-
>> That's what happens when you're a wannabe strong man.
>> Exactly.
>> And in Erdogan's case, it's important to note just kind of the internal dynamics of
Turkey that Cenk and I were just discussing.
Erdogan does have a lot of popular support, unfortunately, quite a bit amongst working
class, and kind of Islamist populist folks.
A lot of the generals and the secularist version of Turkey oppose him.
And Erdogan has been, and this precedes Erdogan, Turkish leaders have been committing consistent
attacks on Kurdish people and minorities in eastern Turkey for decades.
And so it's important to know that this is just an expansion, and extraterritorial expansion
of Turkish brutality against the Kurds.
>> Now, one more component of this that I think is important to share with you.
We know that Turkey didn't actually do the ceasefire that Vice President Mike Pence said
that they had agreed to.
We know that more Kurds are being affected by this, but Donald Trump has decided to paint
himself as an expert at making deals, an expert at foreign policy.
Here he is making that case.
>> There is a ceasefire or a pause or whatever you want to call it.
There was some sniper fire this morning, there was mortar fire this morning that was eliminated
quickly.
And they're back to the full pause.
We have ISIS totally under guard.
Turkey is also guarding separately.
They're watching over everything.
So you have the Kurds who we're dealing with and are very happy about the way things are
going, I must say.
The Kurds, and you also have, the Turks watching, just secondarily watching so we have ISIS
under control.
We've taken control of the oil in the Middle East, the oil that we're talking about, the
oil that everybody was worried about.
The US has control of that.
It was a lot of pain for a couple of days.
And sometimes you have to go through some pain before you can get a good solution, but
the Kurds are very happy about it.
President Erdogan in Turkey is satisfied with it.
And we are in a very strong position.
>> In regard to the so-called ceasefire that does not exist, Turkey's Defense Ministry
said that the Turkish Army had continued its offensive on the basis of humanitarian and
moral values, and of international law.
>> How's that for Orwellian language?
>> Right.
>> So look, Erdogan says that after the initial round of continuing to attack that now things
have quieted down.
And there is some reporting that on Friday night there was less bombings and sniper fire
heard.
But in the beginning there was no question, they did not listen to the ceasefire.
And even the American government put out a statement saying, well it takes a little while
to wind down.
It's supposed to be a ceasefire for five days.
If it takes a couple of days to wind down, how long was the ceasefire?
And, but look, those are all really important issues, and all these nuances are super important.
But there are some things that are not at all nuanced.
What Donald Trump said there about the Kurds being very happy is an unbelievable celebration
of ignorance.
If you say Donald Trump is my guy, and look, I get that some random dude in the middle
of the country doesn't know the history of the Kurds, the Turks, etc.
But anyone that actually does know it or bothers to look at it for one second or think about
it for one minute, knows that the Kurds are not very happy.
The Kurds are furious.
First of all, he says, we had a rough couple of days.
Rough couple of days for who?
Maybe you politically.
218 civilians died at least, so that's not a rough couple of days.
That's it, they're dead, okay?
They're dead.
And so we had that happen.
The Kurds had been driven and arguably ethnically cleansed from an area that is 850 square miles,
the Turks are now occupying it.
To say that the Kurds are very happy about that situation, of all the outrageous lies
that Donald Trump has told, that one might be the most outrageous