NBC reporter compares Trump to Stalin after he suggests Kurds should leave Syria
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}NBC reporter Richard Engel was apparently reminded of Joseph Stalin, the infamous Russian dictator who oversaw mass famines and executions, when President Trump tweeted about Kurds leaving Syria.
"He's saying Kurds should abandon their cities, farms, and homes. Mass population transfer was a tactic Stalin often used, not one called for by modern American presidents," Engel tweeted on Thursday.
He was responding a tweet in which the president commented on a conversation he'd had with Mazloum Abdi, the general commander for the Syrian Democratic Forces. "Perhaps it is time for the Kurds to start heading to the Oil Region!" Trump tweeted.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}DUKE PROFESSOR COMPARES 'DESTRUCTIVE' TRUMP TO 'HITLER, STALIN AND MAO' DURING CNN INTERVIEW
Engel seemed outraged, tweeting "WHAT?!" in response and blasting Trump's suggestion that the Kurds move.
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"The US president just told the Kurdish people to uproot from their homeland -- while under fire in a war he approved -- and move to the 'oil region,' a hostile, mostly desert area with an Arab population, where Kurds are NOT welcome and have never lived," he said.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Under Stalin's leadership, millions of people from a variety of ethnic backgrounds were deported.
Trump's tweet, by comparison, didn't indicate he would engage in mass deportation for Kurdish allies.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}However, he has received criticism for pulling U.S. troops out of northeast Syria -- a move that many saw as abandoning Kurdish allies to conquest by Turkey.