robert: the trump white house confronts impeachment threats, and a syria showdown. >> turkey and the united stat of america have agree to a sanctuary city -- ceasefire in syria. robert: but was it a ceasefire? >> wt we have done the kurds will stand as a blood stain inn in the annals of american history. robe: explosive testimony in thimpeachment inquiry. and the white house scrambles to deny a quid pro quo. withholding milityil aid to ukraine. >> we do that all the time with foreign policy. i have news for everybody, getbo over it. robert: next. announcer: this is "washington week." funding is provided by --

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it has been a dramatic and violent week in syria and on friday, the fighting did ease. but many questions linger. the pause in t standoff between kurdish forces and turkey, brokered by vice president pence and secretary of state mike pompeo, remains fragile. there have beeneeeports of gunfire. ill, president erdogan of turkey insists he b is abiding that agreementor now. president trump says hee takes erdogan's word. others aren edge about turkey's military push, including kurdish allies who have accused turkey of war crimes. the president's actions in syria have a o unleashed a firestorm of criticism from top republicans. >> any commander-in-chief whove territory back to the enemy that was seid by blood of our allies and our soldier is doing a gat disservice to the military. isisill most certainly -emerge.

robert: joining me to discuss these quickly uolding events, ashley parker, white house reporter f "the washington post." susan dis, congressional correspondent for npr. vivian salama, white house reporter for the "wall street journal." and jeff mason, white house correspondent for reuters. vivian, covering foreign policy and now the white house, how are u.s. allies responding to this unfolding situation in syria? vivian: this is somethiom womh implications for countries around the world so a lot of concern growing, especially in europe, middlid eastern countries. at the ndf the day, a big part of the reason we were there isis and essentially a number of people saying this was what was so important -it waso important for us to stay in syria because of u.s. national security. isis grows, it spreads, potential for attack grows so european countries worried about

that. they're worried about anotherer flood of refugees across their borders asell as a number of other issues. obviously middle eastern countries afrd offr spill-over. th has repercussions felt around t world. robert: did predent erdogan play president trump what's theiew inside the white house about how the ceasefire came about and whethil it hold? susan: we have that zelensky transcript with the president. i think everyone wouldove to see the transcript of the call with erdogan but you can see peoplense his administration were shocked at the new on o hand, it wasn't tha surprising because the president campaigned onnding endless wars, threatened to withdraw from syria previouslyou but this is something tha t came so quickly, that was not well planned or well a expecte that goes against the recommendations and advice of a number of top people in his administration. and one thing that's reflective of that, that i think cannot be overstated, is that we are

finally seeingin real criticism from republicans ocapitol hill and republicaever criticize this pre pdent. to see so many peopl including senator lindsey graham, a golf buddy, close friend, saying onit this polic was the wrong decision, it was unacceptable, just underscores howuch alarm there is within the administration and the republican party.sa robert: you're on capitol hill for npr, is there alarm not only for republicans but among democrats in the leadership of the house about the situadson for the k and their fate? susan: there's alarm. i think lawkers haveav been appalled by this. the presi pnt is lonely her without the suprt of even former administrationteicials whoed down over this policy, including forr defense secretary jamesanis. congress can't often agree that today is friday let alone on major policy like. this you saw earlier this week the house voted overwhelmingly on a symbolic resolution condemning essen the president across the board for

his aions a implications.s. when you're uniting these lawmakers on a policy issue, it's an unusu pace. robert: your point, sue, about the president being alone. heen an unusual letter to president erdogan. he wrote "let's workut a good deal. you don't want to be responsible for slaughtering thousands of people, don't be a fl, i will call you later." erdogan reportedlyhe found letter ins iting. jeff, when you're at the white house, what mot president to do this, to send that letter? are there any guardrails around him? jeff: the answer to the second question is no and as far as what motivated him, this is pure trep. i think s people when they first read that letter wondered if it was real because the language was so inf amal apparently president erdogan has also said, this isn't a big priority rht now but there will be a response to this letter at some point. but it was trump being trump,

ing language that he uses on a gular basis with somebody who he considers a friend but also somebody who he was trying to challenge, after all of the criticism that he himself faced for this dision. robert: so there's no one in the cabinet pushing back. is the president alone? based on your report? je: i think thesi pnt is largely alone, yes. ev someone like john bolton who has now left the white house was someone pushing back on things like h this doesn't have that anymore. he doesn't have a john kelly. he doesn't have a chief o staff trying to he any sort of mitigating influence on the president. you see that with mick mulvaney cl rly. he's somebody who wants to keep his job. he still has the acting title. he's not trying to control the president. robert: so the president is trying to negotiate on many fronts as the leader, someone engaging o his own. what are the shifting power dynamics, vivian, in the middle east? are we seeing russia walk into a vacuum in syria? what does it mean for iran? how does the president -- he may think he can deal withbu erdoga,

what does it mean, regardless of his actions, for the region? vivianwe've left a vacuum and it's complicated. essentlly pplot of what ed in the last two weeks in part reversed a lot of t progress that the kurds and other syrians have made their civil wafor t last eight years in terms ofms the kurds running back to assad and to ally themselves with him. in the meantime, our departure gaven open dr for the russians to come in and basically fill that vacuum, where theyy decided, ok, if the u.s. won't be there we'llur provide services. they've helped turkey but they're also allod t assad and with iran. so there's all theseayifferent s coming in. players that the united states typically would not want to see gettg a stronge foothold in the middle east b within two weeks we saw such a drastic ship and it's alarming to think what robert: when you think of

,resident trump writing letters to erdog directing his own foreignolicyyut you had vice secretary ofce a state pompeo go ove o there to try to negotiatete the ceasefir. are they trying to clean up their own president's actions? what their role based on your porting? susan: the president spun that ceasefire, or pause, aslle it in a tweet, as a victory. what they wereer really doing is they were going over for less trying to undo the damage that was caused by the president's decision just 1 days earlier. so it requires a little bit o creative spin to claim that y, helping to slightly undo a catastrophe that you caused, is a win. robe: we heard from one of president trump's staunchest allies on friday,ene majority leader, mitch in "the washington post."op-ed he said mr. trump's decision to pull out troopsnn north

syria was a grave strategic mistake, something that will lee the american people and homeland less safe and embolden our enemies. mcconnell didn't refer to the presidentidy name. >>t have to. susan: part of what was strikg to tt, we'vee' heard that from other republicans, dngectly sahat the president's actions are increasing theisk of a domesticac terror a wow, right. mitch mcconnell has also said we don't know what this is look like yet but it doesn't seem likely theotential ceasefire will stop congress from moving forwd on sanctions legislation next wee p nancosi has said the house will take up a bill. indicated he wants to go stronger and tougher. mcconnell, for him, i think, for a lot of republicans and democrats,his is a personal policy iue that goes beyond party loyalty, donald trump's 95% approval rating among republicans. this is bigger than all that and the response that we' goingo see and theetails and the

sanctions are going to be interesting toat. >> also interesting about that to me is how that's beginning to get to him. aythink ias in the roosevelt room the first or t after he made that decision and we asked him for reaction to the repuican criticism and he was he said inderstand themp. position, it's not my position but i understand it. increasingly, as criticism has increased, hise to that has bec be more -- robert:evangelical christians, part of his base -- not just mittomney, some of his base supporters. jeff: no dbt one reaso why it's going through his head, hey, this may be a problem. because he needshe evangelicals to come out. reaching to those voters o s?ad jeff: that's a good question. vice president pence would probably be the point man for that but i don't know. robert: what about democrats? you saw theebate th week

representative gabbardbaf hawaii talking about she's against regime change wars and noninterventionism. are throated hawks on syria or haviheirwn discussions? vivian: they're having the t own discussions and it prolited hillaryon to weigh in today. she said the russians are eye ong and have their one particular candidate, which she didn't name any names, as well. was promoting this idea webard should leave them to their own vices and maybe we should see how this plays out. e intereserng thi, i just want to make one point to jeff's point, is that,a lot of the members on the hill have learned from past experiences, they've learned from precedent. president trump hastily withdrew from iraq in 2011 and we ended up going back there three yearsa laterecause of the fact that isis started to grow, our absence was something that created this whole problem,

exemist elements were able to members on capitol hill remember that very wel and keep twharge twharge -- warninghat we stay, this will get worse. >> one counter point. jeff isig that the criticism is getting to the president but one thing that's been interesting is he's had a couple when he talks to his rlies, his core, core base supporters and he talks about endless wars and bringing troops home and not spding money overseas that should be spent he -- that's still a big applause line. he gets people chanting "bring them home." he cares about his base, he needs to care about evanllicles and republicans on capitol hill as he faces impeachment but his core supporters are on boardit his cliff notes pitch, bing troops home. robert: will his basetick with him a a we look syria and the

president's impeachment probe. he faces challenges o.capitol hi top diplomats from the trump administration appeared on tool hill this week testify in t hou in the impeachment probe. and a picture began t emerg of donald trumpru shadow foreign policy runisy personal lawyer, rudy giuliani. first, theal former nation security council director in charge of ukraine policy bolton were alarmed about rogue efforts to pressure ukraine involving giuliani. white house acting chief of staff, mick mulvaney, and the u.s.mbassador to the e.u., gordon sondland. on thursday, ambassador sondland, arump donor d testified that the president told himy to d that there was any quid pro q. and michael mckinle who quit last week as adviser to the

secretary of state, said he was disturbeby attempts tose foreigners to hurt the presidt's political opponents. mulvan t appearedo contradict the president on thursday. >> demandor an investigation into the democrats was part of the reason that he ordered to withhold funding to ukraine. >> the look back to whated happ in 2016 certainly was part of the thinghat he was a worriedut in corruption with at nation. thats absolutely appropriate.ro olding funding >> yeah. >> which you described is a quid pro quo. funding will n flow unless the investigation into the well.ratic sicver happened, as do that all the time with foreign policy. i have news for everybody, get over it. there's goingo be political influence in foreign policy. that is going to happen. robert: sue, i'll tellgr you one nep, based on my reporting, who's not getting over it, house democrats. how does mick mulvaney's statement change their t calculation, their stregy on

impeachment?t? susan: i tnk house h intelligence chairman adam schiff said something like things have gone from b to worse t responseo mulvaney's comments on the podium. he really screwed up here on a lot of levels. clearly hisntent was to come out in the white house briefing room and help the president as acting chief of but the effectfe was, not oy did it givt ammuniti docrats in which he was seen as admitting to thel unng heart of the matter of the president's actitiesnt here but he also blew up three weeks o republican efforts to get on the same messaginggi pag, explain what the strategy was and he just left the republicans on capitolit hill who both haveo potentially theal in thet and senate, in many ways, incapable of defending what he said. robert: is it a crisis inside the white house? jeff: the people inside the white house will say thi a crisis like any other srisis they'vn. mick mulvaney said at that press war room bec a, he did't need a nothing wrong, and b, this is

the kind of stuff weealth with al time. but reptlicans who are allied with the white house and former administration officials told me this week, hoois -- look, it's it's not enough for the present be the one man communications director who sends out all of h thougs on twitter and one administration official saying to me, if mick muaney wanted t move the peachment vote up faster, that's essentially when -- what he achieved. robert: why did mick mulvaney do this? >> the president wanted him to go out and do a briefin and originally he wanted mick mulvaney to explain why, which hasn't gotten as much attention as it would in any other news cycle, any other admintration, that the administration had decided that the site of the g7 should be the president's resort in doral. hey wanted mick mulva to explain that and mick mulvaney did try t to explain that. he said we understand it looks horrible butor was just the best site. robert: you also wrotehi

week, ashley, about how mulvaney's comments and so many other things -- you summarized all these points -- are bringing the president's fingerprints on to the impeachment probe in a new way.nt and what the did you find as you sketched itut? ashley: between mulvaney's public comments and all the private comments, what is clear is that at the center of this probe is tresident himself and tt he is personally orchestrating and directing hisd government marshaling the tull force of the federal bureaucracy beh to try to push uaine to interve in domestic polics. and he's doing that and he's telling a numbe of his aides to go to his persona attorney, rudyiuliani, and basically do end-runs around a the normaou experts would find in the chain of command and work on a shadow foreign policy, shadow vernment, with rudy giuliani, and enlisinng these peopl a way they're uncomfortable with

and the reason this probe is moving so farhead so quick is because you're seeing people who are frankly willing to testify because they are-- eage they were alarmed and were raising concerns and more than happy undercover ofoe su to go to capitol hill and tel investigators erything they know. robert: the whiteouse continues to asst executive yprivilege these officials keep testifying. what does that testimony u and what's next? >> there are a lot of people saw a problematic series of a, events that have been happening in the last year, particularly surrounding the role of president trumputside lawyer, rudy gliani, his personal attorney. and that's been sort of the theme of a lot of these depositions is what wul rudy ni doing, there was in the words of oneerson, a shadow diplomacy going on where heac ws dealing with uai and the state department was cut out.

that was seen as problematic. i asked micku mulvaney, do think rudy giuliani's role is problematic and he said the president is free to conduct foreign policy however he sees fit and it's not his place or anyone elss to tryo stop that from happening so it's interesting to see thesehe mix messages. president trump likes to control general very tightly. heikes to be his own spokesman. we know this. ere was an effort to put together a war room of sorts to respond when this imachment inquiry first came. that never came about. the campaign tries to fill that happened so what we see here is basically a lack of any concrete strategy and that's essentially what ended up happening yesterday with mih mulvaney mic wheut to the h was supposed to be talking about something different andam basically under attack by reporters who wanted h to answer questions and that's what ended up happening. dehehe ended up digginge a h that's deeper than they a already in. robert: i keep coming inck to

the uestion of why. you hear about t reports of the tesmony, the president can't let go of 201 whether it's a conspiracy theory, or his own beliefsut ahat happened. is that the reason this all happened, the shadow diplomacy, rudy giuliani? was it 2016? or is i something else? jeff: i think it's largely that, yes. i thinke ri'rt to say he's fixated on 201 robert: but he won. jeff: i know but he doesn't like the fact that people think he may have won illegitimately so if hean prove or find else to prove that wasn't russi and it was ukraine working with the democrats and that's why the server is in ukraine and let's look into that, that would suage his conrns aboutge anyone sing that he won in a way that wn't 100%.as robert: you've seen him speaking to himnd president putin at the same time. do you think of that excngng jeff: it's surreal, really.ar

thatcula press conference. they were standing next to each taking large the side of the russian president over u.s. that sort ofe up again this week in the fact that nancy pelosi, durin theur meeting i the whiteouse, said, all roads robert: les talk about speaker pelosi. what a scene at the white house. each side pointing fingers. the photos that emerged over the standoff across the table. she said the president had a meltdown. he said she hadn. mel m what's the speaker's view. take me inseouse democratic politics as they deal with this embattled president? >> i wouldgehink that the i the white house released of her standing up to the president, i'm not sure it had the intended efct of what i think the president had. her off e made it their banner photo on twitter, the image of the woman standing up to the president is not necessarily an image that nancy pelosi hel a problem wite ihehink she goes into these

confrontations, it strengthe her hand within w the democratic caucus. i think that giveserhe internal politics of that strengthens her hand. i think the s total effect of this week is the house has moved closer told impeaching do trump. they've moved closer in that direction and i think that pelosi question challenges -- you have a lot of democrats that support the investigation. she's not going to bring articles of imp tchment to floor unless she knows they can caucus together. to keep the i think it was easiefor her this week based on the stimony, based oed the white use mting and syria policy, not reled to impeachment but in terms off united opposition. >> the irony of the whole thing is that impeachment supposedly didn't even come up in their eting. it was all about syria policy an yet that is the backdrop, ighing heavily on both sides, that it ended up being what broke the meeting. that's how lot of people interpreted, at the end of the day, they stormed out over syria

policy but the context was so much greater that nancy pelosi wanted to use that to say i standing up against the president.en in this case about syria, but in general. robert: on wednesday, president trump hit the thousand-day mark. they're having these showdowns with t speaker, house democrats, syria -- inside t west wing, do they feel the heat? or not? >> yes and no. it depends on who you ask and on the day because as jeff said, the president is facin an impeachment inquiry. in terms of pure reality, this is t most vulnerability moment in his presidency thus far and they understand that. the flipside is this is a white house who h been under attack and operating in free-wheeling chaos that the president himself encourages since day one so the feeling is quite familiar.

ouff: it's also a white hou that believes it can do anything itants. mickulvaney made that clear in the press conference, he said get over it. robert: if anything is clear, the white house is confident about its position but we'll keep an ese on all t points. we have to lea our conversation there tonight because we want to pay tribute to congressman elija cummings of maryland who died october 17 at age 68. he was a trailblazer in baltimore and nationalol democraticics and recently rved as chairman ofn the powerful house oversight committee. for us reporters who knewim and americans across the nation, he was a strong voice, returning to themes of justice and truth. en he spoke, you listened. thanks f sharing your evening with us. the "washington week extra" is ocoming up next on website, fa,book and youtube i'm robert costa. good night. announcer: corporading for

"washington week" is provided by -- additional funding is provided by -- koo and patricia yuen through the yuen foundation, committedeu to bridging cultural dnces in our communities. the corporatiofor public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viers like you. thank you. [captioning rformed by the natinaal captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org.] -the tension is palpable.

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