Priorities: 'Syria Is Crumbling And We're Talking About A F**king Wall,' GOP Senator Laments

Trump sees dangerous cracks in Hill GOP support

"Syria is crumbling. And we're talking about a f&^king wall," GOP senator says https://t.co/JDOTJlEZcI@elianayjohnson

— Burgess Everett (@burgessev) December 22, 2018

One Republican senator said his colleagues feel like they’ve been increasingly hijacked by Trump. The senator described the president as increasingly intent on pleasing the hard-line House Freedom Caucus and media allies like Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh. Some Republicans find the juxtaposition between what they consider a reckless foreign policy and a reckless border wall fight to be infuriating.

“Syria is crumbling. And we’re talking about a fucking wall,” this senator said.

In a letter sent to the president Wednesday, six senators called his decision to pull out of Syria “a premature and costly mistake” that “threatens the safety and security of the United States.” Four Republican senators signed the letter: Marco Rubio, Tom Cotton, Joni Ernst, and Lindsey Graham. Cotton, Ernst and Graham have all been close Trump allies during his first two years in office. (The conservative Maine independent Sen. Angus King also signed.)

Senator Marco Rubio is outraged that President Trump has decided to put America First and pull US troops out of the endless quagmire in Syria.

Marco Rubio Panics Over Trump's Syria Withdrawal: 'Turns Syria Over to Israel's Greatest Enemies' https://t.co/qRBeOADaQn

— Chris Menahan 🔹 (@infolibnews) December 19, 2018

“We’re very concerned” about Syria, Ernst told POLITICO. “I just think it’s significant. The actions are significant. And I would just love the president to listen to those military advisers and make sure that we’re taking the fight to terrorists overseas, not allowing them to come here.”

The conditions in Afghanistan – at the present moment – make American troop withdrawals a high risk strategy.

If we continue on our present course we are setting in motion the loss of all our gains and paving the way toward a second 9/11.

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) December 20, 2018

In a closed-door meeting with Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday, Senate Republicans unleashed their fury, with one GOP senator telling the vice president that while withdrawing from Syria may cheer the president’s base now, it will hurt him politically when “an American is burned in a cage” at the hands of ISIS, according to a senior GOP aide.

The resignation on Thursday of Defense Secretary James Mattis, who said he was leaving his post because of disagreements with the president over “treating allies with respect” and “being clear-eyed about both malign actors and strategic competitors,” exacerbated those concerns.

It also earned Trump another rare rebuke from McConnell, who said in a pointed statement Thursday that he was “distressed” by Mattis’ resignation and urged the Trump administration to “maintain a clear-eyed understanding of our friends and foes."

“I’m getting emails from my Republican colleagues with phrases like: ‘The wheels have come off.’ Like: ‘Going places we didn’t think it will go.’" said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.). "One of them said: ‘This is a bridge too far.’ It would be nice if somebody would say it besides Bob Corker.”

It's extremism to want a wall, but reasonable centrism to demand a permanent military presence in a sovereign nation without congressional approval

— Neo-Puritan Greer (@ScottMGreer) December 21, 2018

Several conservatives close to the White House have echoed those concerns, saying that they’re beginning to worry the president may not make it to 2020. Corker, a retiring GOP senator from Tennessee who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, seethed on Friday that the country had degenerated into a "tyranny of radio talk show hosts.”