As the U.S. casualty count is trending in the wrong direction in Afghanistan, President Joe Biden is taking heat from all sides for the handling of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the Central Asian nation.
During an appearance on FNC’s “Hannity” on Thursday, former President Donald Trump, Biden’s predecessor, called the move by the Biden administration to withdraw military forces before evacuating non-military personnel the “dumbest move” in perhaps the history of the country.
Partial transcript as follows:
TRUMP: Well, it’s so sad.
It’s probably, from the standpoint of military tactics and just embarrassment, the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to our country. We look like fools all over the world. We are weak. We are pathetic.
We are being led by people that have no idea what they are doing. They take the military out, and then they say, now we will bring out the people. And, all of a sudden, the Taliban walks in.
We had the Taliban so under control, they wouldn’t have moved without getting our approval. We had an incredible agreement. They weren’t killing our soldiers. You know that. And it was part of their — in fact, Biden actually said that today. He said they weren’t killing them because of the agreement that we had, that we did.
And they hadn’t killed one of our soldiers in many, many, many months, and they weren’t going to, because they were afraid to. And we had them totally in control.
All of a sudden, Biden administration takes over, and they say, we are taking the military out. They didn’t say they are taking the people. First, you take the people out, and then you take the equipment out. We left $80 billion worth of equipment.
And I want to tell you, I think our soldiers — forgetting about even civilians, I think our soldiers are in tremendous danger. I think airplanes flying in and out of the airport are in tremendous danger. They have the best equipment, best rockets, the best tanks, and helicopters, Apache helicopters, a lot of them, that are immensely valuable.
And, by the way, Russia wants them because they want to examine them, because we have far superior technology. And China wants them.
This is the dumbest thing. I think it was the dumbest move anybody has ever made perhaps in the history of our country, allowing this to happen, taking the military out and then say, oh, we hope to get the people out.
And then, when I hear General McKenzie say that the Taliban is going to protect us, the Taliban is the enemy. I dealt with the leader of the Taliban. This is not — this is not a very simple man. This is not a Boy Scout, to put it another way.
This is a tough, hardened person that has been fighting us for many years. And we are using them now to protect us?
Look what happened with their protection; 100 people — much more, they say, than 100 people were killed, and 13 of our incredible military were killed. And that is just the beginning, because there are many of our military in the hospital right now very badly wounded and hurt.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor