White House struggles to defend Trump’s Syria withdrawal plan

But while the announcement contained few answers for the public, Congress or the people likely to be affected by the decision, it did accomplish one thing for the president. It changed the news narrative — from one dominated by stories about Trump’s failure to secure the $5 billion he promised to get to build a border wall, to one dominated by coverage of what Trump’s Syria decision meant for the U.S. and its allies.

Shortly after Trump’s 9:30 a.m. ET tweet, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement, “We have started returning United States troops home as we transition to the next phase of this campaign.”

Sanders also claimed that after five years, the United States had defeated the Islamic State caliphate. But she added that American “victories over ISIS in Syria do not signal the end of the Global Coalition or its campaign.”

While experts widely acknowledge that ISIS has been forced out of much of the territory it initially seized in Syria and Iraq, the timing of Wednesday’s announcement caught official Washington completely off guard.

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