Politics

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders – the self-proclaimed Democratic socialist whose standing in the 2020 primary has become threatened by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s surge in the Democratic primary with progressive voters – is seeking to cut into the support of his rival by dismissing her as a “capitalist.”

“There are differences between Elizabeth and myself,” Sanders said during an interview Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” “Elizabeth I think, as you know, has said that she is a capitalist through her bones. I’m not.”

BILLIONAIRES COULD FACE UP TO 97.5 PERCENT TAX RATES UNDER SANDERS’ PLAN: ECONOMISTS

The comments come amid a rise in socialism in the Democratic Party, as candidates become more willing to openly embrace socialism over capitalism. It also follows polling showing that Democrats now view socialism more positively than they do capitalism.

Last year, when asked if she was a capitalist, Warren reportedly said, “I am a capitalist to my bones.”

Sanders explained he is not a capitalist because he “will not tolerate for one second the kind of greed and corruption and income and wealth inequality and so much suffering that is going on in this country today, which is unnecessary.”

A Gallup poll this year found that 43 percent of Americans think socialism would be a good thing for the United States, while 51 percent say it would be a bad thing. Gallup noted that in 1942, a Roper/Fortune survey that found 40 percent of Americans described socialism as a bad thing while only 25 percent called it a good thing.

The polling is fresh evidence that attitudes toward socialism are changing, amid the popularity in the Democratic Party of Democratic socialists like Sanders and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who pushes policies like “Medicare-for-all” and the Green New Deal.

Meanwhile, two economists at the University of California, Berkeley, claim that billionaires could face a 97.5 percent average effective tax rate under Sanders’ plan, which would easily thump other Democrats running for president in 2020.

Emmanuel Saez, one of the professors, told Bloomberg that “with the wealth tax, you get directly at the stock instead of hitting the flow of income, making it a much more powerful de-concentration tool than income taxes.” The report pointed out that Sanders has said that the number of billionaires in the U.S. would be cut in half within 15 years under the plan.

The plan unveiled by Sanders seeks a 1 percent levy on households worth more than $32 million and proposes tax rates that would increase for wealthier people, up to 8 percent for fortunes in excess of $10 billion.

Sanders vowed to go further than Warren and generate more than $4 trillion over the next decade, substantially reducing billionaires’ fortunes. Billionaires would face a 62 percent average effective tax rate under Warren.

Sanders’ plan goes further because it starts on fortunes worth less, kicking in at $32 million. Warren also proposes increasing the wealth tax up to 3 percent on any net worth of more than $1 billion, while Sanders’ tax rates don’t top out until 8 percent for the richest households.

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The Massachusetts senator has topped Sanders in recent polls of Democrats in Iowa and New Hampshire that show her running about even with the longtime front-runner, former Vice President Joe Biden, in those states.

Fox News’ Edmund DeMarche and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

Two economists at the University of California, Berkeley claim that billionaires could face a 97.5 percent average effective tax rate under Sen. Bernie Sanders’ plan, which would easily thump other Democrats running for president in 2020.

Emmanuel Saez, one of the professors, told Bloomberg that “with the wealth tax, you get directly at the stock instead of hitting the flow of income, making it a  much more powerful de-concentration tool than income taxes.” The report pointed out that Sanders has said that the number of billionaires in the U.S. would be cut in half within 15 years under the plan.

The plan unveiled by Sanders seeks a 1 percent levy on households worth more than $32 million and proposes tax rates that would increase for wealthier people, up to 8 percent for fortunes in excess of $10 billion.

Sanders vowed to go further than Sen. Elizabeth Warren and generate more than $4 trillion over the next decade, substantially reducing billionaires’ fortunes. Billionaires would face a 62 percent average effective tax rate under Warren.

Sanders’ plan goes further because it starts on fortunes worth less, kicking in at $32 million. Warren also proposes increasing the wealth tax up to 3 percent on any net worth of more than $1 billion, while Sanders’ tax rates don’t top out until 8 percent for the richest households.

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The Massachusetts senator has topped Sanders in recent polls of Democrats in Iowa and New Hampshire that show her running about even with the longtime front-runner, former Vice President Joe Biden, in those states.

Fox News’ Edmund DeMarche and the Associated Press contributed to this report

President Trump on Sunday said there is widespread support in Washington to impose new sanctions against Turkey over its swift incursion into northern Syria.

Specific details about the sanctions were unclear but Trump said on Twitter, “Treasury is ready to go, additional legislation may be sought. There is great consensus on this. Turkey has asked that it not be done. Stay tuned!”

Reuters, citing an unnamed U.S. official, reported that the measures were being “worked out at all levels of the government for rollout.”

Last week, Trump vowed to obliterate Ankara’s economy if Turkey did anything in Syria that he considered “off limits.” 

Over the past five days, Turkish troops and their allies have pushed their way into northern towns and villages, clashing with the Kurdish fighters over a stretch of 125 miles. The offensive has displaced at least 130,000 people.

On Sunday, at least nine people, including five civilians, were killed in Turkish airstrikes on a convoy in the Syrian border town of Ras al-Ayn, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Syrian Kurdish officials.

The New York Times reported that the troop advancement was so fast, they seized a road that complicated the U.S. troop pullout.

Trump has faced criticism over his decision to give Turkey a green light for the offensive. Critics said the U.S. abandoned its Kurdish allies that were credited for their actions to defeat ISIS. Trump has insisted that he wants to pull U.S. troops  out of endless wars.

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Trump was criticized by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., for his initial decision, but was praised Sunday night for working with Congress “to impose crippling sanctions against Turkeys (sic) outrageous aggression/war crimes in Syria.”

The  Associated Press contributed to this report

You never quite know when President Trump might fire off a tweet, targeting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., or House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif.

“I guess that means that they, along with all of those that evilly ‘Colluded’ with them, must all be immediately Impeached!” tweeted the president.

Trump also described Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah as “a fool” in a tweet, launching the hashtag “#IMPEACHMITTROMNEY.”

How would this happen? Could this happen?

The conventional argument is that no, House members and senators cannot be impeached. That’s true for the most part – even though the House did impeach Tennessee Sen. William Blount – twice – in the 18th Century. But we’ll come back to that in a minute.

TED CRUZ CRITICIZES TRUMP’S CALL FOR CHINA TO INVESTIGATE BIDENS

Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution grants the House “the sole Power of Impeachment.” Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution awards the Senate “the sole Power to try all Impeachments.” Then, Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution articulates who is eligible for impeachment: “The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

The Constitution is clear that the president and vice president qualify for impeachment. But what is a “civil Officer?”

It was determined that a “civil Officer” is someone subject to presidential appointment and Senate confirmation – like a cabinet official or a federal judge. That’s why the House has impeached various federal judges over the years, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase (who bore the nickname “Old Bacon Face”) and Secretary of War William Belknap. In other words, House members and senators aren’t “civil Officers,” and thus, exempt from impeachment.

There’s no mechanism in the Constitution for a voter “recall” as is possible for some state officeholders. The president, vice president, House and Senate members serve a fixed term. However, Article I, Section 5 of the Constitution grants the House and Senate authority to “punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member.”

COLLINS: SCHIFF WANTS INTERVIEWS KEPT SECRET BECAUSE DEMS ‘CAN’T WIN THIS IN THE PUBLIC EYE’

The House has only expelled five members in history. The House kicked out three in 1861 for supporting the Confederacy. The most recent were expulsions were Rep. Michael Myers, D-Pa., in 1980 and Rep. Jim Traficant, D-Ohio, in 2002. A jury convicted Myers of bribery in the “Abscam” scandal. Traficant was convicted on a host of charges.

With the Constitution’s “expulsion clause,” it’s odd that the House would ever try to target a member of the other body – the “civil Officer” issue, notwithstanding. But that’s what happened when the House impeached Tennessee Sen. William Blount in 1797.

One could make the case that the impeachment was extra-Constitutional, and, at the very least, unfair. Why should the House have the ability to impeach a senator, and yet the Senate not have the opportunity to move against a House member? After all, the Constitution declares that the House holds “the sole Power of Impeachment.”

This brings us to the curious case of Sen. Blount – who, by the way, did not have as great a nickname as “Old Bacon Face.”

In 1797, President John Adams learned that Blount and others offered to help Great Britain seize what is now Louisiana and Florida, controlled then by the Spanish. Blount didn’t want Spain to fork over the region to France. He fretted such a move could diminish the value of his own land. So he tried to cut a deal with the British.

SCHIFF ADMITS HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN ‘MUCH MORE CLEAR’ ABOUT CONTACT WITH WHISTLEBLOWER

The House of Representatives found out about Blount’s gambit and voted to impeach him. It was the first impeachment of any kind in U.S. history.

The Senate didn’t technically act on the House’s articles of impeachment for Blount. Exercising its authority under Article I, Section 5 of the Constitution, the Senate, in fact, voted to banish Blount because of his conspiracy with Britain. Thus, Blount carries the ignominious distinction of being the first House or Senate member expelled by Congress – and impeached. But to be clear, the Senate did not conduct an impeachment trial to determine Blount’s guilt, innocence or fitness for office. The Senate simply voted to kick him out.

Believe it or not, in January 1798, the House took another stab at trying to impeach Blount. The House approved five articles of impeachment and sent them to the Senate. The Senate even dispatched Senate Sergeant at Arms James Mathers to Knoxville, TN to serve a summons to Blount to appear in Washington at his Senate trial.

Word didn’t travel fast back then. Upon his return to Tennessee, Mathers discovered Blount was now serving as Speaker of the Tennessee House. Blount did not return to Washington with Mathers. But the Senate elected to conduct the impeachment trial without Blount present. The trial didn’t start until Christmas Eve Day, 1798.

And you thought it was big deal when the Senate voted to approve the first version of Obamacare on Christmas Eve Day, 2009.

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Lawyers for Blount argued the Senate didn’t have the right to bring the articles of impeachment for a trial. After all, the senator wasn’t a “civil Officer” as proscribed by Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution under candidates who could face impeachment. Moreover, Blount wasn’t even in the Senate anymore.

In January 1799, the Senate finally resolved the Blount impeachment. The Senate rejected one resolution stating he should be tried anyway because he had been a U.S. senator. The Senate then approved a second resolution, declaring it lacked jurisdiction to try Blount at all.

And that was the last time anyone ever tried to “impeach” a member of the House or Senate.

The concept of parliamentary “precedent” means a lot in the operations of the House and Senate. But, just because the Senate handled the Blount case the way it did doesn’t mean it established a strict procedural “precedent” for future impeachments. The Senate wasn’t clear on lacking the grounds for “jurisdiction” question when it came to Blount. Did the Senate not forge ahead with an impeachment trial because he was no longer a senator (or, a “civil Officer,” for that matter)? Or, did the Senate dismiss the impeachment trial because the House articles collided headlong with the Constitution’s expulsion for lawmakers clause in Article I, Section 5?

Unclear.

If President Trump wants to impeach Schiff, Pelosi or Romney, the House would have to initiate such a process – if members even think that’s possible, based on the Blount episode. There’s a reason the House hasn’t impeached another lawmaker since the infancy of the republic. And considering the entanglements of the Blount case who constitutes a “civil Officer,” it’s doubtful the House would prepare such articles of impeachment against another lawmaker again.

They’d just try to expel them.

Senator Bernie Sanders showed an unwavering level of focus in the face of bothersome technology during a conference call with the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) International Union presidential candidate forum on Sunday.

In a funny series of events, the presidential candidate was interrupted not once, but twice by his home phone, which played the familiar caller ID “call coming from” voice before a woman appeared to answer the phone during a roughly 20-minute interview with the UFCW.

As if that wasn’t enough, towards the end of his forum – as he discussed needing bold solutions to our nation’s problems – a loud ding could be heard coming from his home, indicating a text message being sent to a phone nearby.

SANDERS ADDRESSES HEALTH AFTER RECENT HEART ATTACK, SAYS ‘I’M GETTING STRONGER EVERY DAY’

Again, somehow he didn’t seem to notice and appeared to brush it off like his most recent heart surgery.

Sanders, who was hospitalized on Oct. 2 for a blocked artery, seemed to be in good spirits, delivering his points at the candidate forum.

On Oct. 2, he wrote on Twitter he was feeling good and thanked those around him for the “well wishes.”

BERNIE SANDERS’ DAUGHTER-IN-LAW DIES FROM CANCER SHORTLY AFTER BEING DIAGNOSED

“I’m feeling good. I’m fortunate to have good health care and great doctors and nurses helping me to recover,” he wrote at the time. “None of us know when a medical emergency might affect us. And no one should fear going bankrupt if it occurs.”

During the forum, the Vermont senator talked about some of his presidential proposals including his feelings on a 32-hour workweek, pension promises, wage theft, wealth equality, and automation.

He relayed a need to be an “organizer in chief” by taking on greed and corruption within this country and didn’t hold back words when addressing his feelings towards Donald Trump.

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“Here is the story. We live in an unprecedented moment in American history and by that I mean only that we have the most dangerous president in the history of this country somebody who is a pathological liar a racist a sexist, a homophone xenophobe and a religious bigot…..We have a corrupt political system in which billionaires are able to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to buy elections undermining the whole thrust of what American democracy is supposed to be about,” Sanders said.

House committees are expected to continue their series of closed-door transcribed interviews as part of their impeachment-related investigation of President Trump this week, and Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga. claims the secrecy is due to the Democratic majority not wanting the public to know that the testimony does not support their narrative.

Earlier this month, former U.S. Special Envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker, Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson and former U.S. envoy to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch went before Democrat-led committees to face questions about President Trump and whether he pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into helping investigate Joe and Hunter Biden. Both sessions took place in closed-door settings. U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland is re-scheduled for this Thursday after his previous appearance was shut down by Trump.

TOP DIPLOMATS TO TESTIFY BEFORE CONGRESS DESPITE OPPOSITION FROM STATE DEPT., WHITE HOUSE

“They said we can’t win this in the pyblic eye, so we’re going to take it behind closed doors,” Collins said about Democrats on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.”

Collins specifically called out House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., accusing him of controlling the narrative by keeping proceedings under wraps and selectively leaking information.

“And so, in the last few days, they have taken it behind closed doors, and Adam Schiff — who has trouble telling the truth, much less spelling it, but he’s a very good leaker,” Collins said, “so what they did is take it behind closed doors, have testimony that I’ve heard from folks who were in the room that said these transcripts should be released completely because they defeat the entire narrative, but as long as he can keep it behind closed doors, then they leak out to the American people only what they want to leak out and this is why you have seen this progression at this point.”

KLOBUCHAR, BOOKER RULE OUT RECUSING THEMSELVES FROM TRUMP IMPEACHMENT TRIAL

Schiff drew criticism from Trump and other Republicans after a recent hearing, during which he portended to read from a transcript of Trump’s July 25 call with Zelensky, only to make up a conversation that was not supported by the facts and was far more egregious than what had taken place.

Schiff admitted that what he said was false, but defended it as being meant as parody. He and other Democrats are looking into the phone call, which inspired an anonymous whistleblower complaint and a second whistleblower coming forward. The complaint accused Trump of pressuring Zelensky to assist in the Biden investigation by using military aid as leverage.

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Republicans also attacked Schiff for not being forthcoming with the contact his staff had with the whistleblower before the complaint was filed. On Sunday, Schiff admitted during an interview on CBS’ “Face The Nation” that he “should have been much more clear.”

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, became one of the few Republican lawmakers to publicly criticize President Trump over his call for China to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.

“Of course not,” Cruz said when asked a question on CBS’ “Face The Nation” regarding Trump’s request to China to open a probe into the Biden family’s business dealings in the country. Biden is one of the leading Democratic presidential primary candidates and one who may serve as Trump’s biggest threat in 2020.

“Elections in the U.S. should be decided by Americans, and it’s not the business of foreign countries, any foreign countries, to be interfering in our elections,” Cruz said.

TRUMP SAYS OBAMA ‘HIDING’ FROM QUESTIONS ABOUT BIDENS AND UKRAINE: ‘I THINK HE KNOWS ALL ABOUT IT’

Trump said this month at the White House that “China should start an investigation into the Bidens.” He said he hadn’t previously asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to investigate the former vice president and his son Hunter, but it’s “certainly something we could start thinking about.”

By publicly egging on China, Trump was amplifying the message he’d delivered in private to the president of Ukraine. That message, revealed by a government whistleblower, has spawned the impeachment investigation by the House.

Trump, who has defended his contact with Ukraine as “perfect,” went further in expanding his request to China, a communist world power that has much at stake in its relationship with the United States in an ongoing trade war.

The boldness of Trump’s call Thursday also suggests he will continue to act as though requests for other countries to investigate potential opponents in the 2020 election are normal, even in the face of broad condemnation from Democrats and some Republicans. It’s a tactic Trump has used successfully before, pushing questionable secret conversations into the open, helping to inoculate him against charges that he is engaged in nefarious action, cover-ups or obstruction of justice.

TRUMP BELITTLES BIDENS WITH GRAPHIC LANGUAGE AT MINNEAPOLIS RALLY, AS CHAOS UNFOLDS OUTSIDE ARENA

In the case of both Ukraine and China, Trump has made his allegations against Biden without evidence of any wrongdoing.

Trump’s comments have rankled some Republican lawmakers and put them in a difficult situation should the House vote to impeach the president.

While many GOP senators have deflected or downplayed Trump’s words, Cruz did not hold back on Sunday, adamantly asserting that “foreign countries should stay out of” U.S. elections.

“That’s true for Russia, that’s true for Ukraine, that’s true for China, that’s true for all of them,” he said. “It should be the American people deciding elections.”

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Trump over the weekend continued to lash out at the Bidens – specifically targeting Hunter Biden Sunday morning in a tweet and implying that he had disappeared. Trump’s tweet came hours after Hunter Biden’s attorney announced his client is stepping down from the board of a Chinese company and vowed that he will not work with foreign companies if his father becomes president.

“Where’s Hunter? He has totally disappeared!” Trump tweeted. “Now looks like he has raided and scammed even more countries! Media is AWOL.” Trump did not elaborate on which countries, or what the alleged scams were.

Fox News’ Ronn Blitzer and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., admitted on Sunday that he should have been clearer about his contact with the whistleblower who filed a complaint about President Trump’s July phone call with the Ukrainian president.

“I should have been much more clear,” Schiff said during an interview on CBS’ “Face The Nation.”

Fox News reported earlier this month that the intelligence community whistleblower did not disclose contact with Schiff’s staff to the intelligence committee inspector general (ICIG).

WHITE HOUSE ANNOUNCES IT WILL NOT COMPLY WITH ‘ILLEGITIMATE AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL’ IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY

The sources said ICIG Michael Atkinson told lawmakers in a closed session that the whistleblower did not disclose the contact with the California Democrat’s committee and that Atkinson didn’t investigate that contact as he had no knowledge of it.

Sources also told Fox News that Atkinson also revealed that the whistleblower volunteered he or she was a registered Democrat and that they had a prior working relationship with a prominent Democratic politician.

Schiff’s office acknowledged earlier this month that the whistleblower had reached out to them before filing a complaint in mid-August, giving Democrats advance warning of the accusations that would lead them to launch an impeachment inquiry days later.

The source said Atkinson told lawmakers he did not know how a Schiff tweet in August and other statements about Ukraine appeared to reflect the substance of the whistleblower complaint, which was not declassified and not shared with Congress until the end of September.

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Schiff previously said that “we have not spoken directly to the whistleblower,” although his office later narrowed the claim, saying that Schiff himself “does not know the identity of the whistleblower, and has not met with or spoken with the whistleblower or their counsel” for any reason.

The revelation led Trump to accuse Schiff of helping to write the whistleblower complaint, which alleged misconduct by the president when he spoke to Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky in July.

“It shows that Schiff is a fraud. … I think it’s a scandal that he knew before,” Trump said. “I’d go a step further. I’d say he probably helped write it. … That’s a big story. He knew long before, and he helped write it, too. It’s a scam.”

Fox News’ Catherine Herridge contributed to this report.

President Trump targeted Hunter Biden Sunday morning, implying that the son of former Vice President Joe Biden has disappeared — hours after Hunter Biden’s attorney announced his client is stepping down from the board of a Chinese company and vowed that he will not work with foreign companies if his father becomes president.

Trump and his own attorney, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, have accused Hunter Biden of improperly benefiting from business dealings in China and Ukraine while Joe Biden was vice president.

TRUMP SAYS OBAMA ‘HIDING’ FROM QUESTIONS ABOUT BIDENS AND UKRAINE: ‘I THINK HE KNOWS ALL ABOUT IT’

“Where’s Hunter? He has totally disappeared!” Trump tweeted. “Now looks like he has raided and scammed even more countries! Media is AWOL.” Trump did not elaborate on which countries, or what the alleged scams were.

Earlier Sunday morning, Hunter Biden’s attorney George Mesires published an online statement on his client’s behalf, providing detailed explanations for Biden’s ties to Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings and the Chinese firm BHR (Shanghai) Equity Investment Fund Management Company.

“Despite extensive scrutiny, at no time has any law enforcement agency, either domestic or foreign, alleged that Hunter engaged in wrongdoing at any point during his five-year term,” Mesires said about Hunter Biden’s work with Burisma, where Biden was a board member until April 2019.

Mesires said that Biden was “a non-executive director” of Burisma, for which he was compensated, but was not part of the management team.

Burisma was the subject of an investigation by Ukrainian authorities, but the case was dropped. The prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin, was fired after then-Vice President Joe Biden threatened to withhold money from Ukraine unless Shokin was removed. Joe Biden denies that this had anything to do with his son, as Shokin was accused of corruption.

TRUMP BELITTLES BIDENS WITH GRAPHIC LANGUAGE AT MINNEAPOLIS RALLY, AS CHAOS UNFOLDS OUTSIDE ARENA

As for BHR, Mesires claimed that Hunter Biden “has not received any compensation” for serving on the board, and “has not received any return on his investment.”

Still, Mesires stated that Hunter Biden plans to resign from BHR’s board by Oct. 31, and that if Joe Biden becomes the Democratic presidential nominee and goes on to defeat President Trump in the 2020 election, Hunter “will agree not to serve on boards of, or work on behalf of, foreign-owned companies.”

Democrats are presently investigating Trump for possible impeachment based on his July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, where he asked Zelensky to assist Giuliani with an investigation of Hunter and Joe Biden’s Ukrainian connections.

Trump’s critics, including House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., have accused Trump of pressuring Zelensky to get involved by threatening to withhold military aid. Trump denied wrongdoing and insisted the call was “perfect.” Zelensky has also stated that he was not pressured.

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Democrats have subpoenaed several Trump administration officials and diplomats for documents as lawmakers probe issues surrounding the phone call.

In a Saturday conversation on “Fox News’ “Justice with Judge Jeanine,” Trump referred to the impeachment inquiry as a “hoax” and “so bad for our country.” He called out House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for not having a formal House vote on an impeachment inquiry, saying, it was because she “can’t get the votes because we’re [the GOP] doing so well right now.”

Fox News’ Melissa Leon contributed to this report.

Former Secretary of Defense James Mattis criticized President Trump’s decision to remove American troops from Syria, saying in his first public comments on the matter that the Islamic State now “will resurge” in the region.

“I think Secretary of State Pompeo, the intelligence services, the foreign countries that are working with us have it about right that ISIS is not defeated,” Mattis said during an interview on NBC’s “Meet The Press.” “We have got to keep the pressure on ISIS so they don’t recover.”

Mattis’ comments come after Trump announced that he was pulling troops from Syria, greenlighting an invasion by Turkey of the war-torn region and stirring up strong bipartisan criticism from lawmakers in Washington that he was endangering regional stability and risking the lives of Syrian Kurdish allies who brought down the Islamic State group in Syria.

TURKISH FORCES CAPTURE CENTER OF KEY SYRIAN BORDER TOWN

“You can pull your troops out, as President Obama learned the hard way, out of Iraq, but the ‘enemy gets the vote’ as we say in the military,” Mattis said. “And in this case, if we don’t keep the pressure on then ISIS will resurge. It’s, it’s absolutely a given that they will come back.”

Mattis was also critical of Trump’s decision to abandon support of Kurdish fighters in the region, arguing that it will make it difficult for Washington to make allies in the future. The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces was the main U.S. ally in the fight and lost 11,000 fighters in the nearly five-year battle against ISIS.

“Reinstilling trust will be difficult for Americans at this point,” he said.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Friday that Turkey won’t stop until the Syrian Kurdish forces withdraw at least 20 miles from the border.

The Turkish military aims to clear Syrian border towns of Kurdish fighters’ presence, saying they are a national security threat. Since Wednesday, Turkish troops and Syrian opposition fighters backed by Ankara have been advancing under the cover of airstrikes and artillery shelling.

Mattis’ comments differ strongly from those of the man who took his former job.

US TO MOVE ABOUT 50 ISIS FIGHTERS FROM SYRIA TO IRAQ AMID TURKISH ASSAULT, OFFICIALS SAY

Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Sunday defended the president’s call to remove U.S. troops from Syria – saying the move will be done “as safely and quickly as possible” – but admitted that the situation was growing more worrisome by the minute.

Esper said he spoke to Trump on Saturday night amid growing signs that the Turkish invasion, which began Wednesday, was growing more dangerous.

“In the last 24 hours, we learned that they (the Turks) likely intend to expand their attack further south than originally planned — and to the west,” Esper said.

The U.S. also has come to believe that the Kurds are attempting to “cut a deal” with the Syrian Army and Russia to counter the invading Turks, he said. As a result, Trump “directed that we begin a deliberate withdrawal of forces from northern Syria,” Esper said.

Trump, in a tweet Sunday, said: “Very smart not to be involved in the intense fighting along the Turkish Border, for a change. Those that mistakenly got us into the Middle East Wars are still pushing to fight. They have no idea what a bad decision they have made. Why are they not asking for a Declaration of War?”

Esper said he was aware of reports of hundreds of ISIS prisoners escaping as a result of the Turkish invasion and of atrocities being committed against Syrian Kurds by members of a Turkish-supported Syrian Arab militia.

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“It gets worse by the hour,” Esper said. “These are all the exact things” that U.S. officials warned Erdogan would likely happen by ignoring U.S. urgings not to invade northern Syria.

Esper said there was “no way” U.S. forces could have stopped the Turks, who assembled a force of about 15,000 troops on the Syrian border, supported by air power.

“We did not sign up to fight Turkey, a longstanding NATO ally, on behalf of the (Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces). This is a terrible situation,” he said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.