MSNBC "All in with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: "Fears of ISIS resurgence."

Interview

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HAYES: As U.S.-Turkish relations spiral downwards, there are dozens of American nuclear weapons sitting at a U.S. military base on Turkish soil. The government is apparently now trying to figure out how to get them out. According to reporting at the New York Times, over the weekend, State and Energy Department officials were quietly reviewing plans for evacuating roughly 50 tactical nuclear weapons the U.S. had long stored under American control at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey about 250 miles from the Syrian border. Those weapons, one senior official said, were now essentially Erdogan`s hostages. Here to talk about that and everything else involving this White House, I`m joined by Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat from Connecticut, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee. Well, Senator, I think you and I both share some healthy skepticism of foreign policy consensus particularly in the American era of endless war. But this does seem terrible with what`s going on. How bad is this from your point of view?

SEN. CHRIS MURPHY (D-CT): I thought the most important point that Mike Giglio just made in the prior segment was this was all avoidable. You and I do share this sense that there has never been a plan from the start as to how the United States was going to unwind its intervention in Syria. Two thousand troops were never permanently going to be able to stop the Turks from moving in. But there absolutely was this opportunity, as Mike pointed out, for a political process in which a U.S.-led effort would eventually try to figure out which Kurds that the Turks could live with in northeastern Syria and which ones had to be moved somewhere else. We never even attempted to work that out. We had, for long periods of time, only one diplomat in northeastern Syria. So, there was no chance to ultimately do anything than either fight the Turks ourselves or wave them through. So this, to me, is so tragic, because all of it could have been avoidable, had Trump decided to actually do the diplomatic work ahead of the American pullout.

HAYES: On the nuclear weapons point. I mean, obviously the relationship with Turkey is fraught for a million different reasons and has been for a long time. Do you give credence to those reports? There was a David Sanger piece in the "New York Times." Does that worry you?

MURPHY: It does worry me. And listen, we do have to step back and assess what kind of security partnership we`re willing to have with the Turks. This is, you know, just the latest in what has been a long series of moves by the Turks that suggest they don`t really want to be in a long-term mutual defense relationship with the United States. Remember, way back in the beginning of the Syria conflict, we were begging the Turks to shut down the border because they were actively waving through ISIS personnel and resources into Syria so that they could create problems for the Kurds and Syrian regime. They were buying Russian missile defense system that could ultimately compromise American fighter jets. So, from the beginning of this conflict, there`s been real questions as to whether the Turks are serious about about being in business with us and whether it`s the nuclear weapons, arms sales or NATO membership. We do have to step back and have some wholesale conversation about our relationship.

HAYES: One of the weirdest thing that is happening here, the president -- we all saw that statement put up by the White House after the call with Erdogan took everyone by surprise, everyone. I mean, literally, I don`t think anyone saw that coming and it was very clear. It basically said look, they have a green light. We`re going to move our troops out of the position so they can go in. There`s this weird kind of overcompensation happening now where the president is like he`s going to destroy their economy. He`s hiking steel tariffs. He`s withdrawing the remaining United States servicemembers from northeast Syria. He`s also going to -- he also wants to sanction them.

MURPHY: Right.

HAYES: Lindsey Graham is working on sanctions. Like, I don`t know what sense to make of this very strange after effect anger being directed.

MURPHY: Yeah. I mean, it`s sort of the much more monstrous equivalent of telling your kid that he can stay out past curfew and then when he comes back after curfew, you ground him for three weeks. I mean, Trump let this happen. He announced the Turkish invasion of Syria before Turkey had announced it last Sunday night. He clearly green lit this operation and now is panicking because he`s found out that he has absolutely no one in the Republican Party, Democratic Party or the foreign policy establishment who thinks what he did is a good idea. And the Turkish operation is turning out to be just as horrible and horrific as what we said it was going to be and so he`s trying to over-correct. But now what you`re going to get, Chris, is the worst of all worlds.

HAYES: Right.

MURPHY: Because you`re going to get the Kurds getting in bed with Assad, a humanitarian catastrophe on the ground. And then a series of ad hoc sanctions that are going to push the Turks closer to an access with Iran and Russia`s splintered NATO. None of that is good for the United States and it all could have been avoided. So you`re getting the worst of all worlds now.

HAYES: I want to ask you a question about Ukraine because you have been, as a U.S. senator, quite invested in the U.S./Ukrainian relationship. You visited there with the late John McCain I remember. We talked to you after you came back from one of those trips. As you`re watching the reporting unfold of the folks who are around the president`s shadow foreign policy with Rudy Giuliani, what did you learn and have you had moments where you go oh, now I understand things that were not -- that were weird to me at the time?

MURPHY: Yes. I mean, listen, I always, as you know, the first person to raise questions about this back in spring and we were worried from the very beginning that there was this quid pro quo relationship. And we now know that it indeed did exist. You know, we`ve also wondered from the very beginning, you know, why the State Department or diplomatic corps had been basically left unstaffed. And I think part of the reason we`re figuring out is that, you know, the president wanted to do his own side deals.

HAYES: Right.

MURPHY: His own side deals that had, at its foundation, either financial interest or political interests, and that`s a lot harder to do if you have really smart career public servants doing your diplomacy. So, if you just get rid all of those folks and you have no acting ambassador for Ukraine, you have no assistant secretary for European affairs. That`s a lot easier for political hacks like Rudy Giuliani to be able to fill that void, and so that all makes a lot more sense to me now.

HAYES: Senator Chris Murphy as always, thanks for making time.

MURPHY: Great.

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