syrians or the turks. i m saddened for our country in being so unreliable. there are a number of, as you know, foreign fighters that are there as prisoners. what do we do with them? do they go back to countries? do we release them? i m devastated by this. and i think what mattis did was very important for our country, because for some of these machinations we see out of 1600 pennsylvania, people realize they don t really matter. this one matters. this one matters to our country. it matters to our foreign interest. this matters to our citizens. senator, the president also tweeted yesterday about mcgurk, the top u.s. diplomat in the fight against isis, who announced he was going to leave his post early. brett mcgurk, who i do not know, was supposed to leave in february but just resigned. fake news is making such a big deal about this nothing event.
mattis made it clear that he thinks that china and russia are bad actors. what was your reaction to it all? look, i m saddened. we ve been working with allies for some 60 coalition groups working with us, the sdf, made up of kurds and arabs, have been doing the fighting for us. we ve been helping them do what they re doing, but they re the ones doing the fighting. we re in the final stages. isis is now concentrated in the euphrates river valley. we re a few month as way from finishing something that we started where we would annihilate a large number of isis members and we stopped. i m just saddened for our country. i m saddened for the broken relationships with countries that have been with us. i m saddened for the many kurds and others that likely will be
north korea. they re not in harm s way but they re still there. in syria, this was a low-cost situation for us to continue to route out syria, to route out isis but also to keep in check what s happening there with russia and iran. and the fact is, we were coming to a close at some point, obviously. we were going to leave syria. but to leave it when you re within a couple of months of doing something that is very important in the fight against isis and the president knows that, and we pull jerk the rug out from under two months in advance, that s hard to understand. as it relates to afghanistan, no doubt. we made a lot of mistakes there. a lot of resources went from afghanistan to iraq in the early years. i saw it happening on the ground visiting.
isis moves. senator bob corker, republican of tennessee. senator, thank you so much for joining us. we appreciate it. jake, good to be with you during these festive times. that s right. merry christmas. you were heavily involved in the negotiations. you helped skr a deal requiring all the parties involved, pelosi, ryan, schumer, mcconnell and president trump to publicly agree before a vote to end the shutdown. i found it striking that part of this deal was that president trump needs to publicly endorse it before there s any vote. why? well, look, jake, this is a purposely contrived fight over, at the end of the day even no matter who wins, our borders are still going to be insecure. i think you know that back in 2013, john hogan and i drafted a border security amendment that
people are ready to come home. you re still not talking about the way that we re doing it. i want to ask you one philosophical point. i don t mean to be rude here but i m just wondering, in the last 20 years, is there any act with u.s. intervention with military force abroad that you support? did you support going yes. after we were attacked on 9/11, i supported going to afghanistan. we re ignoring the resolution, going after the people who planned, abetted those who attacked us. it never said anything about war in yemen, mali, somali, syria. none of this was ever enacted in congress. it s unconstitutional and we should not be doing. i did going in after 9/11. i ve not supported the nation building. i would have declared victory long ago and come home. when the president declares victory over isis, he s exactly right.