Trump campaign says White House is ‘gaslighting’ on Afghanistan exit review
Former President Donald Trump responded to the White House’s report on the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, accusing President Joe Biden of attempting to deceive the public.
The White House released a 12-page report on Thursday outlining the Biden administration’s decision-making process behind the chaotic withdrawal that saw over 12,000 people airlifted out of the country as the Taliban quickly seized control of the government. The report placed most of the blame on the Trump administration, arguing that the former president had severely limited Biden’s options.
“Biden and his administration are trying to deceive the American people about their disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, which directly led to American deaths and emboldened terrorists,” Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung said to the Daily Caller.
Cheung added that “Biden’s complete erosion of American deterrence can be blamed for Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine, Kim’s decision to restart missile launches, and Xi’s pending decision to invade Taiwan and Chinese spy balloons surveilling America. And those are only the nation-state threats we’re aware of. The world has become a more dangerous place under Joe Biden.”
The report outlined the Biden administration’s timeline for the Afghanistan withdrawal, arguing that a series of decisions by Trump had complicated his efforts to end the war. The report cited more than 10,000 troops present in Afghanistan at the time Trump took office in 2017 before more than 3,000 additional troops were deployed just 18 months later.
According to the report, Trump then “ordered direct talks with the Taliban” without consulting U.S. allies or the Afghan government. The former president then further “emboldened” the Taliban by considering giving the Taliban leaders an invite to Camp David on the anniversary of 9/11 in 2019.
Trump then negotiated a deal with the Taliban, known as the Doha agreement, to withdraw all U.S. troops by May 2021. However, the White House argued that the Trump administration did not provide “plans for how to conduct the final withdrawal or to evacuate Americans and Afghan allies.”
“Indeed, there were no such plans in place when President Biden came into office, even with the agreed-upon full withdrawal just over three months away,” the summary read.
The United States completed a full withdrawal of its troops from Afghanistan in September 2021. Since the operation, a suicide attack outside the airport in the capital city of Kabul, Afghanistan, left 13 Americans and about 170 Afghans dead.
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