The deaths of four Americans in Syria last week should be the Trump administration’s Benghazi but in a lengthy interview with Mike Pence Sunday, Chris Wallace failed to note that Donald Trump’s recent announcement he’s withdrawing U.S. troops was both a big favor to Russia and the possible motivation for an ISIS attack that killed the four Americans there.
Whatever Trump’s motivation for his seemingly impulsive decision to withdraw troops from Syria, we know for sure that it prompted the resignation of Defense Secretary James Mattis and served as a Christmas present for Russia. No less a Trump suck-up than Sen. Lindsey Graham suggested that the withdrawal, along with Trump’s claim that ISIS has been defeated, motivated the group’s attack.
Given Fox’s years-long obsession with “investigations” obviously aimed at blaming the highest levels of the Obama administration, especially then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, for the insufficient security that led to the deaths of four Americans at an outpost in Benghazi, Libya, there should have been at least some questions for Pence about the dead Americans in Syria. But no. Nor did Wallace ask any questions about what prompted the sudden decision to withdraw that dismayed just about everyone but Putin and Iran.
Wallace did question why Pence said “ISIS has been defeated” after he knew that the four Americans had been killed in a suicide bombing for which ISIS claimed credit. But even then, Pence didn’t have a good answer, other than “Trump is better than Obama.”
PENCE: But look, the progress that we have made against ISIS since this president came into office has truly been remarkable. After President Obama withdrew American forces from Iraq in 2011, we literally saw this ISIS caliphate rise up and overrun vast areas of Syria and Iraq that had been won by the American soldier. President Obama began the process of a bombing campaign two years later.
But President Trump changed the rules of engagement. He told our military, his commander in chief, to go after them, and our soldiers and the Americans in the fight along with our allies have literally crushed the ISIS state.
Now, as I also said in that same meeting, the president made the decision as commander-in-chief to hand off the fight against ISIS in Syria to our coalition partners. We are working, in the process of doing that.
The president wants to bring our troops home, but recognize there are remnants, there are ISIS fighters still in the region. But we’ve taken back 99 percent of the territory that the caliphate had claimed. In a very real sense, the ISIS state has been defeated, but we will not rest or relent until we drive ISIS not only from the region, but from the face of the earth.
Wallace ended the interview without any further questions.
Watch Wallace ignore what should be Trump’s Benghazi along with his Christmas present to Putin below, from the January 20, 2019 Fox News Sunday.