Former President Donald Trump praised the Taliban as “great negotiation and tough fighters” as he sharply criticized President Joe Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal during a rally in Alabama Saturday evening.
“Taliban, great negotiators, tough fighters,” he told the rally in Cullman, Alabama. “Biden failed totally on the pandemic and he’s now overseeing the greatest foreign policy humiliation in the history of the United States of America.”
Trump negotiated a “deal” with the Taliban that let 5,000 of their top fighters out of prison, and one of them is now the leader of the Taliban.
Following a week of blistering attacks against his successor, the Biden administration’s withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan was predictably a central focus of Trump’s speech at a rally held, in part, in support of Mo Brooks’ campaign for a Senate seat.
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He spent most of his speech condemning his successor, boasting about the Trump administration’s accomplishments and pushing false allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 election.
“Vietnam looks like a masterclass in strategy compared to Joe Biden’s catastrophe and it didn’t have to happen,” he said. “All he had to do was leave the soldiers there until everything’s out, our citizens, our weapons, then you bomb the hell out of the bases.”
“Not even a contest, this will go down as one of the great military defeats of all time and it did not have to happen that way. This is not a withdrawal. This was a total surrender for no reason. They weren’t asking,” Trump added.
This was the first time Trump has held an official rally in Alabama since 2017, though he visited the state several times during the early stages of his 2020 presidential campaign.
Although the rally was held outdoors, officials have expressed concern that it could lead to a spike in COVID-19 in a state lagging in vaccinations and surging in cases, fueled by the highly contagious Delta variant.
The city of Cullman on Thursday declared a virus-related state of emergency ahead of Trump’s rally as Alabama ran out of ICU beds amid an influx of hospitalizations.
Watch:
Trump: Taliban, great negotiators. Tough fighters pic.twitter.com/0yqU6VaLgZ
— Acyn (@Acyn) August 22, 2021
