zens, we the people, do not know enough to have a qualified, let's say a useful, opinion about Syria. Here are the things that I would want to know in order to have a better sense of whether this is a good idea or a bad idea. And I'll give you some context. Let's say this were a big company. Let's say it was a Fortune 500 company and the CEO of this company is Donald Trump. And the CEO announces that they're going to make some big change in the company. It doesn't matter what it is. They're going to add a new product, they're going to subtract a product, they're going to move a headquarters, anything big. What percentage of the company, including the people who know the most, you know the people who are closer to the decision, how many of them support the CEO in any big decision about a Fortune 500 company? What percentage do you think?

The people saying 90 and 100 percent, I don't think you've ever worked at a big company. The people saying 50 and 20 and 40 percent and 30 percent, you have worked at a big company, right? So you're seeing more reasonable estimates coming in. So you could tell the people who have worked at big companies because the people who are saying that half or fewer are going to support the CEO no matter what, right? Half or fewer are going to say yeah that's a great idea, CEO. And the other half or maybe more are going to say I'm not so sure about this. Our CEO is crazy. He's impulsive. He did not listen to the experts. Why is he not listening to the experts within the company?

So the first context you have to know is that the ordinary business of being a CEO is making the hard decisions and having often even the majority of your company tell you it's the wrong decision. So when you see President Trump make a decision about Syria and then you read the news about all of the top level people who know the most about Syria and you see them saying my God it's a mistake, the first thing you should tell yourself is that's normal. And it doesn't tell you whether it's a mistake or not. Because here's the other thing you learn from watching CEOs in big businesses. They will make the unpopular decision and sometimes it works out. More often than not the problem that everybody sees is not as big as people thought. More often than not people can just figure it out.

So the president brought up the idea about eight months ago and everybody said no no no we can't do it that quickly, it's bad. And so the president, like any CEO, said then do it in six months. He waited eight. And now he's saying all right I waited, time to do it. And there's still people saying no no no don't do it now. Who is right and how would we know? You can listen to lots of experts say it's a bad idea. You can listen to Lindsey say it's a bad idea. But here's the things you don't know. What you don't know is that any of them are playing bad cop. You don't know. Because Lindsey Graham could be playing a role which is all right I'm going to make it look like this is hard for the president to do and I'm going to oppose him because that would give him the greatest leverage in negotiating some kind of a larger thing in the Middle East that I'll talk about in a minute. So you can't necessarily trust that Lindsey Graham is against the president versus pretending to be against the president because it would be the best thing for him to do. If Graham were working with the president the best thing for him to do would be to put a strong front of opposing him because then it looks like that whatever the president is doing, if he's doing it as part of a larger negotiation, it looks like he's giving up more. That the president is taking more personal political risk because even his own team isn't supporting him here. All right so you can't rule that out. I'm not saying that's the case. Perfectly reasonable to assume that Lindsey Graham just disagrees. He's kind of a hawk on these places and they don't want to make the same mistake that they made in Iraq. But the point is you can't know for sure who's telling the truth and who's playing a role because this is part of a larger negotiation and everybody's playing a role. They're not just saying what they believe in every case.

The other thing we don't know is apparently there are only 2,000 American troops in Syria. Do I have that right? How much can you get done with 2,000 troops? How much were they doing? How much of those 2,000 troops done in terms of let's say on the ground combat in the past six months? Now if they're special forces and they have air support you can get a lot done, right? 2,000 people with American air support, that's going to take out pretty much any nest of ISIS. It would have to be an enormous force for those forces not to be able to take them out. But how much have they done for the last six months? Have you seen a report? Or will you see a report when you turn on CNN today? Will there be a report that says that of our 2,200 people — somebody saying closer to 5,000 but we'll see, so fact check me on that — but of our let's say few thousand, how many of them were fighting troops and how many of them were support? Because I would imagine that with 2,000 people there can't be more than 300 who are actually combat, 500 maybe. Somebody help me out if there's anybody who's got a better sense of combat logistics. Is there kind of a 3 to 1 support? Somebody say a 3 to 1 support for the people, yeah. So maybe there were 300 to 500 actually firing weapons, right?

So here's the question. And then of the 300 to 500 who are firing weapons, how many clumps of them were there? You know, how many were a fighting unit that would go out and do a specific mission? Is that 50 in a group? So it's five or 10 groups. You know, how big is it? If we don't see that reporting could you know exactly whether it matters if we leave or not? If you don't see today some kind of report that says how many actual fighters we had and what they actually did for the last six months, could you really know how important it is to keep them there versus leaving? Can't really know. So that's the first thing. And I suspect that we will not have good reporting on that. Somebody's saying what an idiot. I'll get rid of you.

And all right so here's a few other things we know or we don't know about Syria. The biggest thing we don't know about Syria is whether this is part of a larger conversation. Is it part of a grand deal for the Middle East? And I'm going to give you the most optimistic point of view. Doesn't mean this is true but I'm going to paint two pictures and you tell me if the facts fit picture one or picture two better.

Picture one looks like what CNN will report, which by the way is hilarious because the president has made MSNBC and CNN and all of the haters, the president has made the Democrats the pro-war party. So he's got all the Democrats because they have to oppose whatever he does arguing that we should keep our military in another country. And you have the Republican hawk, the person that the Democrats were most worried about, saying why don't we get our troops out of this other country we have no business there. So he's completely reversed the story there. So that's funny.

But here are the two, let's call them two movies. So one of them is that the president is, as CNN will paint him, a big old impulsive dope who didn't ask anybody in advance, doesn't care about the outcome, is not getting into the details as much as he should, has disagreed with the experts, disagreed with Mattis, and made a gigantic mistake by pulling people out too quickly. So that's one movie. Now do the facts support that movie? And the answer is yes, yes. But the facts might support more than one movie so it doesn't mean that this one's true just because the facts support it.

So the things we know are that there will be lots of people who say they didn't like it. That I'm sure that will be in evidence. We probably will hear that there are people who should have been consulted who weren't, at least not recently. He's had six months to think about it so he's probably talked to a lot of people in the last six months about this topic but maybe in the last week he didn't consult anybody about making the decision. So yes, the movie that says he's a big old impulsive dope who didn't ask anybody and he's making a giant mistake definitely fits the facts. But of course we don't have all the facts. I'm just saying it fits the facts that are in evidence by CNN and the people who hate the president.

Now is there another movie that also fits the facts? And there is. And this one's interesting. In the other movie this is part of a larger strategy. And let me just kind of tell you all the picture, all the pieces of the puzzle, and then it might come into focus in your head. The president, if there's one thing he's good at that even his critics would say he's really good at, knowing what matters. Wouldn't you say that that's a fair statement? That even his biggest critics would guess that he's good at knowing what matters, especially what matters to people's psychology. He knows what's important. For example in the economy he knew that getting rid of some regulations and working on jobs and getting our optimism up would be good. Those were exactly the important things for him to be working on, etc. So he's really good at knowing what's important. That's the first thing.

So one movie that fits all the facts is that he's working a bigger play. That there's just a bigger play in the Middle East. And what would it look like if the Middle East were shaping up for a grand deal? What would be all of the variables that would be swirling around and starting to come into place? Well one of them would be where does the US designate as the capital of Israel. So we've already gotten past the Jerusalem is the capital of Israel decision. Now part of what the president did there was he took it off the table. So instead of becoming a big thing to negotiate he just said all right this is no longer a negotiation. This one got settled. And it did kind of get settled. So you would expect to see that get settled if something bigger were going to happen.

You would also expect that Israel's walls would be working. In other words Israel's strength and fate would be more secure than ever so that everybody who opposes them would say ah there's just no point. No matter what we do to Israel every year they're stronger, every year it's harder to attack, every year we have less chance. And that's the case.

The other thing you'd want to see is that some of the Arab countries that are traditionally anti-Israel, whether officially or not officially, would start to move toward Israel and away from the Palestinians and away from Iran. And sure enough, and there may be a factor that the Khashoggi death happened. I think you'll see that Saudi Arabia will be more flexible because they need to kind of do something good. And there was a report that Saudi Arabia might either take a trip to Israel or get closer to recognizing Israel, etc. So you would expect exactly that to be happening if something good was shaping up over there.

The other thing you'd expect to happen is that the Yemen conflict in which Saudi Arabia and Iran are backing different sides, you would expect that Yemen would have to be talking some kind of a peace for anything good to happen in the Middle East. And indeed Yemen has announced that they're planning on peace talks and the US has pulled out its air support and is putting some pressure on Saudi Arabia to wrap something up. So you would expect to see that happening if there was going to be anything bigger happening in the Middle East.

The other thing and maybe the most important thing is that you would expect to see Iran either getting flexible or pushed so hard that they will soon have to be flexible. And indeed we're seeing that. We're seeing that Iran is not advancing on the battlefield as far as I know and we're seeing that Iran is getting bled dry and its economy is falling apart. Its own population is starting to rebel and Iran is going to be desperate if not flexible. So you would expect to see that if things were about to go in the right direction.

So let's talk about Syria. Under any scenario, correct me if I'm wrong, under any scenario wasn't Russia going to own Syria no matter what? And Russia working with Iran perhaps may be taking some responsibility for Syria. But was there any chance that Russia would leave its control of Syria? Not really, right? There was no scenario in which we thought that was going to happen. So if we get out of Syria that leaves it to some say Russian influence and Iranian influence. Now of the two which one is safer for Israel? Well Russia is safer. So if you're Israel you would want Russia to have more control in Syria and you would want Iran to have less.

If you were Putin and the United States came to you and said here's the deal, if you push Iran out of Syria for us we would really appreciate that and we'll let you do it. Now I'm not saying that that's the deal. I'm just painting a picture in which you can start to imagine how everything is connected. So let's say there was some effort to come up with a bigger deal. It would look like Russia getting its way. It would look like Russia having its way in Syria. And the main way that Russia could have its way in Syria would be if the US gets out and lets Russia dominate Iran because of course they would. There I can't see a scenario in which Russia would say you know Iran is here too, we love Iran, Iran is our ally. You know Iran, why don't you dominate some of Syria with us? I don't see that happening do you? I see Putin increasing his influence until Iran is not really part of the Syrian deal except maybe sending some money in or something.

So here's the big thing to look for. Look for what happens between Russia and Iran. Because if part of the conversation about the US getting out of Syria involves more Russia in Syria then probably Israel could maybe live with that because Russia at least likes Israel. They don't seem to have any problem with each other. So I would look for that.

And I would argue that with the United States pulling out of Syria which removes by the way a huge psychological point of provocation if you're Iran. Let's say you're Iran and behind the scenes you're getting flexible because you have to. You've noticed that Iran has not made a lot of noise about we're going to build up our nuclear weapons. You haven't heard that have you? Why is it that Iran who is not shy is not waving his fist and saying we're going to build up our nukes because of your economic pressure on us? They're sort of quiet aren't they? Isn't Iran sort of suspiciously quiet? Makes it feel as if they're actually talking to us doesn't it? I feel like they're talking behind the scenes.

So if you were talking to Iran and you were saying look Iran what we want you to do is back off of Israel, back off of your support for your proxies, back off of your support for suicide bombers, back off in Yemen. If we wanted Iran to back off on all those places we care about what would they ask from us? What would they want from us? Well they might want the US military to get out of Syria. That might be the main thing they wanted. And if we only had 2,000 troops there and if the Russians were going to essentially take care of business whether we're there or not it could be part of a larger conversation.

So don't be surprised if you see Yemen negotiated to some kind of a peace deal because Saudi Arabia has pressure from us and Iran has pressure from us and everybody else to make that work. So you might see Yemen negotiating peace. You might see Saudi Arabia reaching out to Israel in a way they never have before. You might see Iran being okay with backing off of its support for Hezbollah and for some of the anti-Israel forces. You might see them making a deal to not build nukes so that they could rebuild their economy. And you might see Hamas being isolated by everybody. So you might see Hamas and anybody who's in favor of terrorism over there, you might see them isolated. And it might look like a big old deal.

Now so now I've painted two pictures. One of them imagines that President Trump is a good negotiator and that on his team is Jared Kushner who has been working behind the scenes for something like a Middle East deal. Now if I told you that Jared Kushner has been working on something for a long time that was very hard to get and he's working with President Trump would you say to yourself hey that team can get stuff done? Well that team is the team that got you prison reform that seemed nearly impossible before Kushner and Trump teamed up, right? So we know that Jared plus the president can get stuff done that didn't look like it could be done. We also saw and I believe this is right that Jared Kushner was instrumental in negotiating the deal with Mexico and Canada. So the new trade deal that was probably pretty hard to do. So we may have two examples of where Jared Kushner working quietly behind the scenes combined with President Trump's instincts and power can get something done that it didn't look like other people could get done.

Did it seem unusual to you that President Trump would take so much hate for not going hard on Saudi Arabia because of the Khashoggi thing? Well you know we know that Jared Kushner had a good relationship with Prince Salman and it looked to me like the president was trying to maintain that for larger reasons. And so the question I ask you, which of these two movies fits the facts best?

Movie number one: the president is an impulsive big old dope who ignored all the experts and made a hasty deal that will be a huge mistake. That does fit the facts, the public facts right? The real facts are all below the surface and we don't have access to them but what you're looking at and what will be reported in the headlines is going to look a lot like that right?

Movie number two: Jared Kushner is very effective, very strategic and he plus the president are an insanely good team for getting the strategy right as well as the persuasion. And they've been working on a Middle East deal, we know that to be true, for a while. And we know that the president has protected Prince Salman so that tells me he's probably important to something right? He's protecting him because he's important to something else. That part seems clear. We know that Iran is weakened. We know that Yemen is starting to talk. We know that Israel would not be abandoned by this president right? If you see Israel complaining about the US pulling out consider that that might be part of the plan. That they can complain so it doesn't look like the president can easily do this. You want the president to look like he's making a big personal and political sacrifice by pulling out of Syria. That's the look that gives him the most negotiating power because then you can say to somebody else look in order for me to pull out I will actually risk losing the next election. That's how much risk I'm going to put into this working out in the Middle East. Then you can go to the other leaders and say look the most important leader here, President Trump, put his own career on the line by pulling out of Syria. Now step up. He put his career on the line to support Saudi Arabia in a time when frankly they didn't deserve it. They did not deserve our support but he put his career on the line for a larger win. So that puts pressure on other leaders to step up right? Is Israel going to have to accept something that maybe is less than what they wanted? Probably. Probably to get something bigger they're all going to have to step up.

So here's what I'd be looking for in the next few months to confirm or disconfirm the theory that the Syria move is part of a larger chess game. And that would be some kind of movement from Iran. So if you see Iran start to get flexible that would support the movie that the president knows what he's doing. He's working with Kushner. There's actually a bigger strategy and no he did not ask every expert over there for the military situation because it could be that Putin's going to take care of it and our military would not love that at all. But I don't care. I mean personally do you care if Putin kills ISIS or we kill ISIS or the people we arm kill ISIS?

Then the next, I don't want to forget this because it's important, but there's the risk that Turkey will go after the Kurds that we've armed and who have fought on our side for so long. And it would be a very bad form for the US to abandon important military allies to be slaughtered by Turkey. But Turkey is a NATO ally. Now we don't agree with them on a lot of things but they are a NATO ally. Do you think that this president would abandon the Kurds without having a deal worked out with Turkey? Now it might be that he still needs to work that deal out and it hasn't been finalized but it feels like Turkey, well let me put it this way. If we pull out of Syria and Turkey slaughters our allies what do you think this president would do to them? Turkey would be in a lot of trouble. For one thing we'd probably kick them out of NATO. I don't know if we can do that unilaterally but probably could get close to it. So Turkey would have a horrible price to pay if we pull out and they fill the vacuum and slaughter the people that we left or try to take them over. One way or the other it would be they would have a horrible price to pay. Trump I think would just crush them if they did that because it would be a humanitarian crisis. It would be the sort of thing that an ally shouldn't do so they can't be our ally if they do that.

All right here's the next topic. In a humorous news story a German journalist for Der Spiegel, one of their biggest publications, who is also, here's the funny part, he had been named in a prior year the CNN journalist of the year. So CNN named journalist of the year who didn't work for CNN. He was another independent journalist but they named him journalist of the year. It's been discovered that something like 17 out of 60 of his articles were just totally made up. So CNN named as journalist of the year somebody who literally made up news. And you can't make up a story like that. Well I guess that was a funny thing to say. Apparently you can make up a story like that because CNN's journalist of the year made up stories like that. That's what he did. 17 out of 60 of them were just completely made up. And he would pretend that there was a protagonist in the story who was a gritty little survivor who made it through this or that tragedy but it turns out he was just making it all up. Or a lot of it.

All right so that's funny. The other thing that's funny is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did not like an article in Politico about her and so she tweeted her criticisms, pretty sharp criticisms about the fake news media. She complained that the sources were all secret sources and she implied that they were inaccurate. Now here's what's funny about that. Number one is it fair for her to attack the media for this story? And the answer is yeah it's totally fair right? Is there anybody who disagrees with her for saying that the media is inaccurate and their secret sources are not credible? I think we all agree with that right?

The funny part is that for the past three years we've been hearing that to criticize the media is to be a dictator. So we're having this weird upside down world situation where Trump is a dictator for criticizing the press and then literally the opposite. Trump like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is like she has a lot of the persuasion power. She's good at that. But in terms of politics and which side she's on she's the opposite. So if criticizing the press makes you simultaneously a dictator but also the opposite of a dictator what does that mean about your worldview? Or let me put it in my two movies frame.

If your movie was that Trump is a dictator and one, correct me if I'm wrong, wasn't the number one piece of evidence for Trump being a dictator is that he attacked the media? Am I wrong about that? Fact check me. I believe the number one piece of evidence is that he attacked the media. And I've said there are two explanations for that. One of them is that he's a big old dictator who is attacking the media because the first thing you do if you're a dictator is attack the media right? And I do agree that dictators