Fox News’ Shep Smith wonders if Russia is using Turkey’s Erdogan to manipulate Trump

On Wednesday, Fox News host Shep Smith questioned President Donald Trump's latest unprecedented actions towards his intelligence chiefs.

Trump has publicly contradicted with his intel chiefs assessment on global affairs and even insulted them by tweeting that they should go back to school.

Smith reported that Trump recently had a phone call with Tayyip Erdoğan, the current president of Turkey. He noted that Russia might be influencing Turkey as an effort to influence Trump.

"We know that the president was on a telephone call with President Erdogan. After that phone call, the president made the decision [to pull troops out of Syria.] "He did not inform the Pentagon or any of his leaders prior to doing so."

Smith then interviewed Michael Singh, the former senior director for Middle East affairs at the U.S. National Security Council.

"What was the president basing his assessment on aside from the telephone call from Erdogan?" Smith asked.

"The concern of the intelligence community or other U.S. Policymakers is two-fold. ISIS  is now moving into more of an insurgency or terrorism role, and that can itself be difficult to deal with. So they're nervous about saying ISIS is defeated when we may see terrorist attacks emanating from ISIS," Singh said.

“So the question is, where is the influence coming from? The bigger picture question is, are the Russians influencing Erdogan to influence President Trump and is that why this happened,” Smith asked.

"It may be that it's true," Singh responded.

Watch the full interview below: