Donald Trump recently claimed that during his negotiations with the Taliban as the President of the United States he threatened to “obliterate” the co-founder of the Terrorist group if he stepped out of line. In an interview with Fox News earlier this week, Mr Trump stated that he gave Taliban co-founder Abdul Ghani Baradar a satellite image of his home as a veiled warning amid talks with the terrorist group.
“I sent him a picture of his house,” the former US President insisted of Abdul Ghani Baradar, who is now the deputy prime minister after the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan.
“He said, ‘But why do you send me a picture of my house?’ I said, ‘You’ll have to figure that one out,'” Mr Trump claimed.
“I said, ‘If you do anything – from that point on we didn’t loose one soldier – we’re going to hit you harder than any country has ever been hit.’ He said, ‘I understand, your Excellency,'” he continued.
Further, during the interview, Mr Trump also noted how he had wanted to get out of Afghanistan and had been the one to whittle the American presence “down to a very few soldiers”. “We would have had a very similar schedule, but I would have taken the military out last,” he insisted, adding he would also have not allowed $85 billion worth of “the best military equipment in the world” to be “left behind”.
Mr Trump also went on to say that US President Joe Biden’s “horrible withdrawal” led to 13 service members getting blown up in horrifying scenes of chaos at Kabul airport in August last year. “We lost 13 soldiers, and we also had a large number of soldiers horribly wounded – no legs, no arms, their face blown to smithereens,” he said.
He even insisted that a “lot of bad people” were also able to flee Afghanistan in the mass of people cramming into jets unchecked in the rush to flee. “A lot of bad people got on those airplanes. Bad people – terrorists,” Mr Trump claimed.
Notably, during the Afghan withdrawal last year, the Taliban forces were able to retake the entire country in an offensive after the US forces had departed from the main base at Bagram. The terrorist group arrived in Kabul, and the US and its allies working there were evacuated after the Afghan military’s defeat in the chaotic scenes.
