Column | The shadow of ISIS will loom over the Trump presidency

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

66% : In his first term, Donald Trump declared victory over the Islamic State.
49% : More than six years later, a detachment of U.S. troops still operates in Syria as part of that continued mission, and may remain as Trump starts his second term later this month.
42% : "We have won against ISIS," Trump said in a video at the time, adding furthermore that U.S. forces deployed to Syria are "coming back now."Even then, officials in the Trump administration were more sanguine than their boss, telling reporters that ISIS's territorial losses didn't mean the group was extinguished and that an enduring mission was needed to keep its militants in check.
32% : "Some analysts are skeptical that Trump will persevere.
31% : It was December 2018 and Trump announced that the U.S.-led coalition against the extremist Islamist group had completed the job of dislodging the terrorist faction from its major redoubts in Syria and earlier in Iraq.
24% : "Trump is going to ask, 'Why do I have to keep ... troops on to fight ISIS, when essentially all of our fighting is mainly bombing them in the desert?'" James Jeffrey, Trump's Syria envoy in his first term, told my colleagues.
9% : Sullivan's imminent successor, Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Florida), is a mainstream Republican hawk who hinted that Trump may not follow through on his longstanding vows to pull out U.S. troops in Syria.

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