On Thursday, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Michael Hayden retweeted an image that explicitly compared supporters of President Donald Trump to the Taliban, as reported by Fox News.
Hayden, a retired four-star general with the Air Force, who served as CIA Director from 2006 to 2009, retweeted another account which first posted the image: The tweet in question depicted a split-screen image with Islamic terrorists riding in a convoy of pickup trucks and waving their flags, alongside a caravan of Trump supporters in pickup trucks waving American flags. The caption read: “Their Taliban. Our Taliban.”
The comparison comes less than a week after the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan’s capital city of Kabul, effectively toppling the Western-backed government and reclaiming power. The speed with which they retook Afghanistan, as well as the subsequent chaos that has ensued in the days since, has led to universal condemnation of the Biden Administration’s poor handling of the withdrawal of American forces from the war-torn country. Thousands of American citizens remain trapped in the country after the Taliban announced that they had completely taken over the Hamid Karzai International Airport.
Hayden was the second person to serve as CIA Director after the position was reorganized from the original title of “Director of Central Intelligence;” he succeeded the first CIA Director, Porter Goss, and served under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Prior to that role, he served as the first-ever Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, under the inaugural Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte, and also served as Director of the National Security Agency under Bush and Bill Clinton.