While other officials were already very clear about moving against Turkey for buying the S-400 missiles from Russia, President Trump seemed very mixed up on what, if anythig, the US might do to Turkey.
During the course of his talk to reporters, Trump initially claimed that the US wasn’t even looking at sanctions against Turkey, then later in the same comments confirmed that the US was already looking at the sanctions and would not rule anything out.
Trump said earlier in the week he considered sanctions unfair on US weapons makers and unfair on Turkey, but now says “it’s a very, very difficult situation for a lot of reasons,” none of which he specified.
Turkish officials have said they believe Trump could give them a waiver from any sanctions, though US officials have denied this is the case. Trump appeared not to have any idea what’s going to happen, concluding with “we’ll see what we do.”
And Turkey sits at the entrance door to the Black Sea where our Commander-in-Chief commands the presence of our warships. If Turkey considers sanctions to be an act of war all bets are off.
Hmmm, I wonder how good the US will be at shooting down F-35s. Perhaps that will be put to the test soon.