robert: the trump white house confronts impeachment, threats and a syria showdown. >> turkey and the united states of america have agree to a sanctuary city -- ceasefire in syria. robert: but was it a ceasefire? >> wte have done to the kurds will stand as a blood stain inn in the annals of ericanistory. robert: explosive testimony in thimpeachment inquiry. ond the white house scrambles deny a quid pro quo. withholdingilitaryil aid to ukraine. >> we do that all the time with foreign policy. i have new for everybody, get over it.ro rt: next. announcer: this is "washington week."

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robert:good bvening. it hn a dramatic and violent week in syria and on friday, the fighting did ee. but many questions linger. thpause 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. still, president erdogan of turkey insistss heiding by that agreement for now. president trump says hee takes others arers on edge about turkey's military push, inuding kurdi allies who have accused turkey of war crimes. the president's actions in syria have also unleashed a firestorm of criticism top republicans. >> any commander-in-chief who gives territory back to the enemy that was seized by blood is doing a gat disservice tors the military. is will most certainly

-emerge. robert: joining me to discuss these quickly uolding events, ashley parker, white hse reporter f "the washington post." susan davis, congressional correspondent forpr. 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 hou 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 ncern growing, especially in europe, middlid eastern at the end of the day, a big part of the reason we were there to begin wit was to contain isis and essentially a number og was what wasis so important -- it waso important for us to stay in syria because of u.s. national. securi isis grows, it spreads, potential for attack grows so

european countries worried about that. they're worried about anotherer flood ofs refugees acr their borders asell as a number of other issues.vi sly middle eastern countries afrd offr spill-over. this has repercussions felt around the world. robert: did predent erdogan play president trump here? what's the view inside the white house about how the ceasefire came about and whether it will hold? susan: we have that zelensky transcript with the president. i think everyould love to see the transcript of the call with erdogan but you can see peoplense his administration were shocked at the news. on o hand, it wasn't thaau surprising b the president campaigned on ending endless wars, threatened to withdraw from syria previously but this is something tha t came so quickly, that was not well planned or well expected and 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 om republicans on capito hill and republicaever criticize this pre pdent. to see so manync people,ding senator lindsey graham, a golf this policy it was the wrongon decision, it was unaccsttable, underscores howuch alarm there is within the administration and the republican party. robert: susan, you're on capitol hill for npr, is there alarm not only for republicans but among democrats in the leadership of for the kurdshend their fate? susan: there's alarm. i thinke lawmakers h been appalled by this. the presi pnt is lonely her without theuprt of even former administration oicials who stepped down over this, poli including forr defense secretary james manis. congress can't oft agree that today is friday let alone on major policy like. this you saw earlier this week the house votedhe oveingly on a symbolic resolutionem cong essentially the president across the board for

his actions and implications.s. when you're uniting these lawmakers on a policy issue, it's an unusual pace. robert: your point, sue, about the president being alone. heent an unusual letter to president erdogan. hes wrote "lerk out a good deal. you don't want to be responsible for slaughtering thousands of peop, don't be a fool, i will call you later." erdogan reportedly found the letter ins iting. jeff, when you're at the white house, what motivated the president to do this, to send are there any guardrails around him? jeff: the answer to theti second qu is no and as far as what motivated him, this is pure i think some people when they first read that letter wondered if it was real becse the language was so informal and apparently president erdogan h al said, this isn't a big priority right 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 aas regular with somebody who he considers a friend but also somebog who he was try to challenge, after all of the criticism that he himself faced for this decision. robert: so there's no one in the cabinet pushing back. alone?president based on your report? je: i think the president is largely alone, yes. ev someone like john bolton who has now left the white house was someone pushing back on thin like this -- he doesn't have that anymore. he doesn't have a john kelly. he doesn't have ahief oftaff trying to have any sort of mitigating iluence on the president. you see that with mick mulvaney cl rly. he's somebodwho wants to keep his job. he still has the acting title. he's not trying to contr the president. robert: so the president is fronts as the leader, someone engaging on his own. what are the shifting power dynamics, vivian, in the middle east? are we seeing russia walk into a vacuum in syria? at does it mean for iran? how does the president -- he may think he can deal wit, erdog

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

president trump writingto lettes erdogan, directing his own foreignolicyyut you had vice president pencery and secref state pompeo go ove o there to try to negotiatete the ceasefir. are theyrying to cleanp thear own president's actions? what is their role based on your reporting? p susan: tsident spun that ceasefire, or pause, as he called it in a tweet, as a victory. what they wereer really doing is they were going over for less than 48 hours, basally, and trying to undo the damage that was caused by theresident's decision just 1 days earlier. so it requires a little bit of creative spin to claim that y, helping to slightly undo a catastrophe that you caused, is a win. robert: we heard from one of president trump's staunchest allies on friday, sene majority leader, mitch mcconnell, who penned anp- in "the washington post." he said mr. trump's decision to pull out troops in northern

syria was a grave strategic egstake, something that will leave the american people and homeland less safe and embolden our enemies. mcconnell didn't refer to the president by name. >> didn't have to. susan: part of what was strn:g to that, we'vee' heard thatrom other republicans, directly saying that the president's actions are increasing theisk of a domerticr attack. wow, right. mitch mccon all haso said we don't know what this is look likely the potential ceasefire will stop congress from moving rwd on sanctions legislation next week. nancy pelosi has said the house will takep all bill. mcconnell has indicated he wants to go a stronger tougher. mcconnell, for him, i think, for a lot of republicans and democrats,his is a personal policy issue that goes beyond party loyalty, donald trumpalpp 95%val rating among republicans. this is bigger than all that and the resnse that we'reoing to

see and theetails and the sanctions are going to bree ining to watch. to me is how that's beginning to get to him. i think ias in the roorovelt the first day or t after he made that decision and we asked him f reaction to the repuican criticism and he was tame for preside s trump. d inderstand the position, it's not my position but i understand it., increasings criticism has increased, hisesnse to that has bec be more -- tirobert:evangelical chrs, part of his base -- not just mittomney, some of his base supporters. jeff: no doubt reason why it's going through his head, hey, this may be a problem. because he needs the evangelicals to come out. robert: is the whiac house ng out to those voters o s?ad jeff: that's a goodueion. vice president pence would probably be the point man for that but i don't know. robert: what about democrats? you saw in the debate th week

reprentative gabbardbaf hawaii talking about she's against regime change wars and noninterventionism. are the democrati party full throated hawks on syria or having their own discussions? vivian: they're having the t own discussions and it hillary clinton to weigh in today. she said the russians are watching and have their e on one particular candidate, which she didn't name any names, as well. but as you said, tulsi gabbard was promoting this ide we should leave them to their own how this plays out.should see e intereserng thing, i just want to make one point to o jefs point, is that,a lot of these members on the hill have learned from pastie expes, they've learned from precedent. president trump hastily withdrew from iraq in 2011 and we ended up going back there three yearsa later because 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 remembey that v well and keep twharge twharge -- warning thate stay, this will get worse. >> one counter point. jeff is right that the criticism is getting to the president but one thing that's been hinteresting iss had a couple of rallies. his core, core base supporters and he talks about endless wars and bringing troops home and noy spending m overseas that should be spent he -- that's still a big applause line. he gets peoplebrhantingg them home." he cares about his base, he needs to care about capitol hill as he facesicans on impeachment but his core supporters are on board with his cliff notes pitch, bing troops home. robert: will his basetick with him as look at syria and the

president's impeachment probe. he faces challenges on capito hill. top diplomats from the trump administration applred on piill this week to testify in t house in the impeachment probe. and a picture began to emerge of donald trumpru shadow foreign policy run by his personal lawyer, rudy giuliani. firs theormer national security council director in charge of ukraine policyd testif that she and john 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., on thursday, ambassador sondland, a trump donor dd testifat the president told him to deny that there was any quid pro quo. and michaelle mck who quit last week as adviser to the

ptcretary of state, said he was disturbed by att to use foreigners to hurt the presidt's political opponents. mulvaney aeared to contradict the psident on thursday. >> demand for an investigation into the democratsas part of the reason that he ordered to withhold funding to ukraine. o what look back happened in 2016 certainly was part of the thinghat he was worried about in corruption with at nation. that is absolutely appropriate.o withholding funding? >> yeah. >> which you described is quid pro quo. funding will not flow unless ths investigation into the democratic sicver happened, as well. >> we do that all the time with foreign policy. i have news for everybody, get over it. there's going to be political influence in foreign policy. that is going to happen. robert: sue, i'll tell you one group, based on my reporting, owho's not gettingr it, house democrats. how does mick mulvaney's statement change their t calculation, their strategy on

impeachment?t? susan: i tnksa house hen intell chairman adam schiff said something like ehings have gone from b to worse in respo to mulvaney's comments on the podium. lot of levels.wed up here clearly his intent was to come out the white hou briefing room and help the president as acting chief of staff but the effectfe w, not oyid it give ammunition to docrats in which he was seen as admitting to the underlying heart of the matter of the president's actities here but he also blew up three weeks of republican efforts to get on the same messaginggi pagw explait the strategy was and he just left the republicans on capitolit hill whooth haveo deal with the impeachment and potentially the trial in the senate, inany 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 they've seen.ny o mick mulvaney saidt that press conference that we don't need ar oom because, a, he did nothing wrong, and b, this is

the kind of stuff weheal w all the time. but reptlicans who are allied with the white house and former adnistration officia told me this week, hook, -- look, it'sus it's not enough for the present to be the one manir communicationstor who sends out all of h thoughts on twitter and one administration official saying to me, if mick mulvaney wanted to move the peachment vote up faster, that's essentially whe -- what he achieved. bert: why did mick mulvaney do this? >> thent presi wanted him to go out and do a briefing and originallye wanted mick lvaney to explain why, which hasn't gotten as much attention as it would in anyewther cycle, any other admintration, that the administration had decided that the site the g7 should be the president's resort in doral.te he wmick mulvaney to explain that and mick mulvaney did try t to explain that. he saidane under it looks horrible but doral was just the best se.

robert: you also wrote thi 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 .significant and new w what the did you find as you sketched it out? ashley: between mulvaney's public cllments and the private comments, what is clear is that at the center of this probe is the president himself and tt he is personally orchestratinnd directing his government and marshaling the fullce ff the federal bureaucracy behind it to try to pu ukraine to interve in domestic polics. and he's doing that andte he's ing a number of his aides to go to his persona attorney, rudyiuliani, and basically do end-runs around all the normal experts you would find in the chain of comnd and workn a shadow foreign policy, shadow government, with rudy giuliani, andse enlisting t people in a way they're uncomfortable with

and the reason this probe is moving so f ahead quickly is because you're seeing people who are frankly willing to areify because the eager -- they were alarmed and were raising concernsndore than happy undercover of subpoena to go to capitol hill and tell investigators everything they know. robert: the whiteouse continues to asst executivee privil yet these officials keep testifying. what does thatestimony us and wh's next? >> there are a lot of people within the governmen that, saw a problematic series of events that have been happening in the lastcuear, parrly surrounding the role of president trump'sutside lawyer, rudy giuliani, h personal attorney. and that's bnen sort of the theme of a lot of the depositions is what was rudy giuliani doing, there was in the words of oneerson, a shadow diplomacy going on where he was dealing with ukrai and the state department was cut out.

that was seen as problematic. i asked mick mulvaney, do you 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 else's t try to stop that from happening so it's interesting to see thesehe m messages. president trump likes to control messaging inal gen very tightly. heikes to be his own spokesman. we know this. ere was ano effort t put together a war room of sorts to respond when this imachment inquiry first came. that never came about.e ampaign tries to fill that role but is never really happened so what we see here is basically a lack of anyonete strategy and that's essentially what ended up happening yesterday with mih mulvaney coicng out to the where he was supposed to be talking about something different and sically came under attack by reporters who wanted h to answer questions and that's whah ended upening. dehehe ended up digging a hole that's deer than they are already in. robert: i keep coming inck to

the of why. you hear about t reports of the testimony, the president can't let go of 2016, whether it's a conspiracy theory, or his own beliefs about what happened. is that theeason this all happened, the sdow diplomacy, rudy giuliani? was it 2016? jeff: i think it's largely that, yes. i think you're ri'rt to say he's fixated on 2016. robert: but he won. jeff: i know but he doesn't like think hethat people may have won illegitimately so if hean prove s or findeone else to prove that wasn't russi and it was ukraine workioc with the dts and that's why the server is in ukraine and let's look into tt, thatould suage his conrns about anyone suggesting that he won in a way that wasn't 100%. robert: you'ven s him speaking to him and president putin at the same time. do you think of that excngng jeff: it's surreal, really.

that particula press conference. other and presiden wast to each taking large the side of the russian president over u.s. inlligence officials. that sort of came up again this week in the fact that nancy pelosi, durin the meeting in the white house, said, all roa with y lead back to putin. robert: les talk about speaker pelosi. what a scene at the white house. eachg side point fingers. the photos that emerged over the standoff across the table. she said the president had meltdown. he said she had a mel mown. what's the speaker'siew. take me inside house democratic politics as they deal with this embattled president? >> itould think the image the white house released of her standing up to the president, i'm not sure ihe had intended efct of what i think the president had. her off e made it tiranner 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 i think when she goes into these

strengthensns, it her hand within w the democratic caucus. i think that gives her the internal politics of that strengthens her hand. i think the s total effect of this week is the house has mov closer to impeaching donald trump.e theyved 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 ofo impeachment the floor unless she knows they can pass and she has to keepuc the together. i think it was easiefor her this week based on the stimony, based oed thehite house mting, and syria policy, not reled to impeachment but in terms off united opposition. >> the irony of the whole thing is that ieachment supposedly didn't even come up in their meeting. itir was all about syria picy an yet that is the backdrop, weighing 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 tte c was so much greater that nancy pelosi wanted to use that to say i standi up againsthe president. in this case about syria, butnen l. robert: on wednesday, president trump hit the thousand-day mark. they're having thesewi showdowns the speaker, house democrats, syria -- inside the 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 facing an impeachment inquiry. terms of pure reality, this is the most vulnerability moment in his presidency thus far and they understand that. the flipside is this is a whi house who h been under attack and operating in free-wheeling chaos that the president himseln urages since day one so the feeling is quite familiar.

jeff: it's als a white houseou that believes it can do anything it wants. mickulvaney made tha clear in the press conference, he said get over it. robert: if anything is clear, the white house is confident keep an eye on all these points. we have to lea our conversation there tonight because we want to payte tri to congressman elijah cummings of maryland who died october 17 at age 68. he was a trailblazer i baltimore and national democratic politics and recently rvedec as chairman ofn the powerful house oversight committee. for us reporters who knew him 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 wi us. the "washington week extra" is coming up next on our website, fa,booktu and y i'm robert costa. good night. no

cer: corporate funding for "washington week" is provided by -- additional funding is provided by -- koo and patricia yuen through the yuen foundation, committeddg to bg cultural differences in our communities. the corporation for pur ouoadcasting, and by contributions topbs station from viewers like you. thank you. [captioning performehe natinaal captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org.] -the tension is palpable.

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