Former President Donald Trump ripped into President Joe Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal saying the actions were "indefensible."
His comments came during an interview on Glenn Beck’s radio show on Tuesday.
Asked if the current administration was following his withdrawal plans, Trump said, "No. Not even a little bit — and we had a great plan. It was based on many conditions. For instance, you can’t kill American soldiers."
He said he warned the Taliban that "if you kill any Americans or any American soldiers, we’re going to hit you harder than any country has ever been hit before."
"For approximately 18 months, not one American soldier was killed," he said. "You have to understand I did want to get out with dignity and I wanted to take our equipment out and I didn’t want to get soldiers killed."
He said he has spoken to "numerous" parents of those American soldiers who died in a bomb blast at the Kabul airport during the withdrawal.
"They will only speak to me," Trump said. "They won’t speak to Biden because they view what he did as having killed their child. What he did was just indefensible. He took the military out first and he left all these people. And we became beggars to get the people out."
Trump noted Apache helicopters were also left behind.
"These are really expensive weapons," he said. "They (the Taliban) have 28 of them. And they’re brand new. They’re the latest model. Why wouldn’t (the Biden administration) bring pilots in to fly out the planes or helicopters. It would have taken them an hour."
Trump noted European nations respected the U.S. greatly during his administration.
"Now, they don’t," he said. "They’re laughing at us like we’re fools. And the way (Biden) got out of Afghanistan was, in my opinion, I think it was the most embarrassing event in the history of our country.
"If you get out of Afghanistan, you leave with great dignity. You leave with your weapons. We could have had our soldiers saved, our people out, everything beautiful …"
Trump also blasted Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
"Peril," a new book by journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, claims Milley had sought to assure China's Gen. Li Zuocheng of the People's Liberation Army in calls that the United States was stable and not going to attack during the final months of the Trump administration. And, if there were to be an attack, he would alert his counterpart ahead of time.
"I learned early on (Milley) was a dope," Trump said.
Jeffrey Rodack ✉
Jeffrey Rodack, who has nearly a half century in news as a senior editor and city editor for national and local publications, has covered politics for Newsmax for nearly seven years.
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