Disney’s Eternals star Angelina Jolie became the fastest Instagram user to reach 1 million followers, after calling President Joe Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal a “sickening failure.” Jolie created an Instagram account on Friday, because “the people of Afghanistan are losing their ability to communicate on social media and to express themselves freely,” she said.
“So I’ve come on Instagram to share their stories and the voices of those across the globe who are fighting for their basic human rights,” Angelina Jolie said.
In this handout provided by the UNHCR, UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador, Angelina Jolie presents education materials to both local Headteacher, Gul Rahman, and young schoolgirls in the village of Qala Gudar, Qarabagh District February 2011 some 28km outside Kabul, Afghanistan. Angelina Jolie was visiting the site where she will fund a new girls’ primary school. Girls are only currently studying part of the year in the open air grounds of a local mosque and limited to Grade 4 due to the lack of a proper school building. (Jason Tanner/UNHCR via Getty Images)
After torching Biden’s disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal, which she called “sickening,” and “a betrayal and a failure impossible to fully understand,” her Instagram account quickly soared to over 1 million followers, breaking the record as the fastest account on the platform to gain 1 million followers.
Jolie garnered 2.1 million new followers in just three hours, beating the previous record held by actress Jennifer Aniston, who gained 1 million followers in five hours and 16 minutes after joining Instagram in October 2019, according to a report by Evening Standard.
U.S. President Joe Biden speaks in the Roosevelt Room on the continuing situation in Afghanistan and the developments of Hurricane Henri at the White House on August 22, 2021 in Washington, DC. The White House announced earlier that in a 24 hour period starting on August 21st that US military flights evacuated approximately 3,900 personnel and 35 coalition aircraft evacuated approximately 3,900 personnel. Tropical Storm Henri made landfall around Long Island, New York on Sunday. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)
At the time of publishing, Jolie has already garnered a total of 7.7 million followers.
In the Maleficent star’s first Instagram post, she wrote, “I was on the border of Afghanistan two weeks before 9/11, where I met Afghan refugees who had fled the Taliban. This was twenty years ago.”
“It is sickening to watch Afghans being displaced yet again out of the fear and uncertainty that has gripped their country,” she continued. “To spend so much time and money, to have blood shed and lives lost only to come to this, is a failure almost impossible to understand.”
“Watching for decades how Afghan refugees — some of the most capable people in the world — are treated like a burden is also sickening,” Jolie added.
The Taliban ended up taking control of Afghanistan before the United States was set to complete its troop withdrawal — an incident that left thousands of Americans stranded in the country as chaos ensued at Kabul’s main airport.
Some of the loudest criticism of Biden’s withdrawal comes from former White House officials from the Trump administration, such as former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who oversaw Trump’s negotiations for peace in Afghanistan.
“It is a demonstrably incompetent, tactical and operational use of America’s power in a way that has put American lives at risk,” Pompeo told Breitbart News exclusively on Friday. “And that is disheartening. It is sad. But more importantly, it has ramifications all across the world.”
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
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