Sen. Mitt Romney raises a troubling theory about Trump and Turkey

This post has been updated with Schumer’s and Esper’s comments.

Sen. Mitt Romney delivered perhaps the most thorough Republican rebuke of President Trump’s Syria withdrawal Thursday, calling Trump’s abandonment of the Kurds there “a bloodstain on the annals of American history.”

But while that line has gotten a lot of play, there’s something else Romney said that shouldn’t escape notice. He suggested Trump got bullied into the withdrawal by Turkey — and that he backed down.

“It’s been … suggested that Turkey may have called America’s bluff, telling the president they are coming no matter what we did,” said Romney, of Utah. “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.”

View the complete October 18 article by Aaron Blake on The Washington Post website here.