One senior administration official summed up the sentiment: “Trump was like: You want that pile of dirt, Erdogan? Fine.” Without thinking it through or conferring with any of his government’s many experts on the region, Trump effectively condemned a tireless partner of the U.S. military, the Kurdish general Mazloum Abdi, to death. Kelly called Kevin Sweeney, Mattis’s chief of staff, to let him know what Trump had just done.
