Former Trump official blasts Trump’s lie: ‘ISIS is not defeated’

Trump likes to claim that he has defeated ISIS — but a former Trump official who resigned in protest over Trump’s reckless decision to pull out of Syria is setting the record straight about Trump’s blustering lie.

“ISIS is not defeated,” Brett McGurk told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Monday, adding that “this mission is not over.”

“I do not think there would be a single expert that would walk in the Oval Office and tell the President that this is over,” McGurk said.

McGurk would know. Until late December, he was the special presidential envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIS. He wrote in a recent Washington Post op-ed that Trump’s decision to pull American forces out of Syria was tantamount to giving ISIS “new life.”

McGurk wrote that he found out about the Syria decision while he was in Baghdad helping to manage the fight against ISIS. Soon after returning to Washington “to help mitigate the fallout from this decision,” McGurk realized such efforts would be fruitless.

So he tendered his resignation.

“The president’s decision to leave Syria was made without deliberation, consultation with allies or Congress, assessment of risk, or appreciation of facts,” McGurk wrote, adding that Trump’s claim to have defeated ISIS “was not true.”

In McGurk’s conversation with Amanpour, he spoke incredulously about Trump’s recklessness in making the decision. McGurk said Trump acted “without any serious consultation with the national security team, with the secretary of defense or others.”

“That’s just not the way to run foreign policy effectively,” McGurk said.

McGurk is not the only high-level administration official who has quit over Trump’s dangerously impulsive move on Syria.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis resigned shortly after Trump’s misleading declaration, sending Trump a blistering letter on the way out. Mattis was in favor of keeping a U.S. presence in Syria, but Trump ignored this advice — much to the delight of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, who praised Trump’s actions.

But other Trump officials are more than willing to repeat his lies about ISIS. On the very day when ISIS claimed responsibility for the deaths of four American troops, Vice President Mike Pence claimed in a speech at the State Department, “The caliphate has crumbled and ISIS has been defeated.”

Trump’s reckless foreign policy has made him a global laughing stock and significantly reduced America’s global influence. And now, Trump is making the world less safe to cover up for his lies.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.