Former president Donald Trump blasted the Biden administration in two recent interviews, calling the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan “the most embarrassing moment in our country’s history.” In interviews with Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, and Fox News host Sean Hannity, the former president lamented what he called a “disaster,” and explained how it should have been done.
“It’s a military defeat, it’s a psychological defeat,” Trump said in an telephone interview with Fox News host Maria Bartiromo, Wednesday morning. The former president said the leaders of Russia, China, and North Korea are watching the debacle as it unfolds, and laughing.
“They’re all watching this disaster and they’re laughing at it,” he said, adding that Europe is probably laughing at us too. “Europe is as bad as China in many ways.”
Trump went on to say that it was a mistake to withdraw the troops before getting the civilians and military equipment out of harm’s way.
“You don’t take the military out first, you take the military out last. This is like the Captain jumping off the ship if the ship is sinking,” he said, adding that American citizens should have gone first. “And then we’ll take some people that helped us, but we can’t take hundreds of thousands of people.”
After removing Afghans who helped us, Trump said we needed to get the billions of dollars worth of military equipment out of the area, including brand new Blackhawk helicopters.
“After you get the equipment out, you bomb the hell out of the forts so no one else can use them,” Trump told Bartiromo. “That’s what I was going to do.”
He complained that now all of the U.S. military bases in Afghanistan are now being used by the Taliban.
“It’s not even believable,” he said. “We took the soldiers out first, and now we’re trying to put the soldiers back in.”
“I frankly would have bombed all of the forts,” he repeated.
Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity in a televised interview Tuesday night that he personally told the leader of the Taliban during negotiations last year, that “if anything bad happens to Americans or anybody else, or if you ever come over to our land, we will hit you with a force that no country has ever been hit with before—a force so great you won’t even believe it.” Trump said he told the commander, Abdul Ghani Baradar, (now the First Vice Emir of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan) that the first place the U.S. would hit would be his village. “The first bombs would be dropped right there,” Trump said he told Baradar.
President Trump says this is a very hard time for our country. In all the years he doesn’t know if we’ve ever been humiliated like this. pic.twitter.com/sxibzzELaL
— The Dirty Truth (Josh) (@AKA_RealDirty) August 18, 2021
Trump told Hannity that he never liked former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani, who fled the country when it became clear that the Taliban would take control of the capital, Kabul. “I thought he was a total crook,” he said.
Trump voiced his support for the “real generals” on the ground in Afghanistan, rather than the political generals in Washington D.C. “We have a lot of generals who shouldn’t be generals, frankly,” he told Hannity.
The former president said that the Bush administration’s decision to “go into the Middle East” was the “worst decision in history.”
“It turned out to be quicksand. Do you think it’s better now than it was 20 years ago?” he asked. “It’s much worse.”
President Trump says he let the real generals that are over there fighting make the decisions to get rid of ISIS. We have a lot of generals that shouldn’t be generals and he’s watching them all the time. pic.twitter.com/qzGePNILhi
— The Dirty Truth (Josh) (@AKA_RealDirty) August 18, 2021
Trump ridiculed Biden, saying he only returned to the White House from vacation because he was getting bad press. “I don’t even believe he’s calling the shots,” he added.
President Trump says Joe Biden only returned to the White House because he was getting bad press and he doesn’t even think he’s the one calling the shots. pic.twitter.com/N1SPgBZYHW
— The Dirty Truth (Josh) (@AKA_RealDirty) August 18, 2021
Trump told Hannity that he told Chinese President Xi Jinping when he visited Mar-a-Lago not to do anything with Taiwan.
“Then the election gets rigged, and we end up with a different president, and what happens? There are bombers now … 28 bombers flying over Taiwan,” he said. Trump predicted that “bad things” were going to happen to Taiwan because the Chicoms don’t respect our leadership or our country anymore.
President Trump said when Xi was sitting in a sofa at Mar-a-Lago he told him not to mess with Taiwan. Then the election got rigged and a week later there was 28 bombers flying over Taiwan. He’s concerned bad things are going to happen to Taiwan because of our weak leader ship. pic.twitter.com/63lMP8PA9r
— The Dirty Truth (Josh) (@AKA_RealDirty) August 18, 2021
Later during the interview, Trump alluded to the January 6 political prisoners, blasting the Department of Justice for conducting “political persecutions.”
“They use prosecutors for persecution,” Trump said. “And our country is angry about it.”
President Trump says they could’ve finished the war within a month but instead they paid billions of dollars to the contractors not to do it. He doesn’t think the people of our country or the people of this country can put up with this stupidness. pic.twitter.com/Ij8J0WdEyb
— The Dirty Truth (Josh) (@AKA_RealDirty) August 18, 2021
Joe Biden will face his first media interview over the situation in Afghanistan this evening.
He will be interviewed by ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos, who was the White House communications director for Bill Clinton.