Jeffrey Toobin Defends Trump on Syria Withdrawal: Not a ‘Political Negative,’ He Has ‘Finger on the Pulse’ of Public Opinion

CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, a longtime Trump critic, stepped up to defend President Donald Trump for the political instincts behind his decision to withdraw US forces from northern Syria, saying: “I think the president has his finger on the pulse” of public opinion.

Trump’s abrupt announcement on Monday that he was removing US forces from the area along the Syrian-Turkish border had sparked widespread outrage among Republicans and Democrats, over fears that Turkey would conduct a violent campaign against the Kurdish separatists who helped the US defeat ISIS.

But Toobin pointed out to the panel on CNN’s The Situation Room that the American public has grown weary of foreign wars nearly 18 years after the US invaded Afghanistan. And while he demurred on assessing the strategic wisdom of the move on national security grounds, he said he didn’t think there would be a grassroots pushback on the withdrawal.

“Isn’t it true that the public, not 100%, is more with Trump than with the politicians on this one?” Toobin said. “Do you think there’s an enormous desire for us troops to be over in Syria for years more, to be in Afghanistan for almost 20 years? I think the president may have his finger on the pulse. I don’t know if it’s in the national security interest, but I don’t see this as a political negative for the president at all.”

CNN host Wolf Blitzer added that this move also fits with Trump’s longtime aversion to foreign deployments of the US military, of any kind. “Going back 20 years and on this issue he’s been very consistent,” he noted. “Get the troops out of Iraq. Get them out of Afghanistan. At that time there were no troops in Syria. He didn’t want — he didn’t even want troops in Japan or South Korea or Germany.”

But Retired Adm. John Kirby countered by saying that the roughly 1,000 remaining US forces currently deployed to Syria were there for a very specific mission. “I understand, many Americans are uncomfortable with troops in harm’s way for extended periods of time,” Kirby said. “But there are some real significant, pragmatic reasons for our national security to have them doing certain things. The footprint in Syria hasn’t been that big. It has been very specifically targeted against ISIS and ISIS was and remains a legitimate threat to our interests and our allies and partners.”

Watch the video above, via CNN.

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