MILITARY/SYRIA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/TRUMP PEOPLE: “President Donald Trump on Thursday ’12-20-18] responded to Sen. Lindsey Graham’s fiery rebuke of the president’s decision to pull troops out of Syria, accusing the South Carolina senator of being against saving the lives of soldiers serving overseas. The war of words between the Trump and the Republican senator happened after Trump’s decision, which he announced on Twitter, that the U.S. military would pull out of Syria because ISIS had been eradicated. That’s something Graham called ‘fake news’…Graham, in his speech on the Senate floor Wednesday evening, agreed that he would also like for troops to be back in the U.S. but argued having a presence in Syria would allow the country to stabilize and halt any future spread of radical Islam, calling the 2,000 soldiers there almost a ‘virtual’ border wall that keeps terrorists at bay and the U.S. safer. He said it was too soon for the U.S. to pull out of the country and compared the order to President Barack Obama’s decision to pull U.S. military from Iraq and Afganistan, which some critics say allowed the spread of the Islamic State.”
–Christal Hayes, “Trump fires back at Sen. Graham with accusation he’s ‘against’ saving U.S. lives in Syria,” USA Today, December 20, 2018 4:00 pm