Former President Trump slammed President Biden’s botched U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, telling “Varney & Co.” during an exclusive interview on Tuesday that America has been “humiliated.”
He argued that “the single worst decision ever made in our country’s history” is for the U.S. “to go to the Middle East.”
Trump said that the Biden administration cannot do “a simple withdrawal from a country that we should have never gotten into in the first place.”
“The level of incompetence on this withdrawal is even far greater than the level incompetence at the southern border,” Trump said, adding that “what’s happened to our country in the last eight months is a disgrace.”
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He also argued that Biden “owes an apology” to the American people and the world.
The former president made the comments the morning after the Pentagon announced that all U.S. troops have departed Afghanistan. The final C-17 carrying service members lifted off from the Kabul airport at 3:29 pm U.S. Eastern Time on Monday.
The removal of U.S. troops meets the Aug. 31 deadline the Biden administration agreed to with the Taliban, officially drawing the country’s longest-ever conflict to an end.
But the fate of those left behind remains a mystery, with White House press secretary Jen Psaki confirming earlier on Monday that a “small number” of Americans who want to leave remain in the country.
CENTCOM Commander Gen. Kenneth McKenzie acknowledged, “We did not get everybody out that we wanted to get out.”
The general added that the ISIS threat to the operation was “very real” until the end, with “overwhelming” U.S. airpower circling overhead in an attempt to prevent further attacks.
In addition to the people left behind in Kabul, McKenzie said the U.S. also left behind equipment such as the C-RAM (counter-artillery, artillery and mortar) system that was used to shoot down rockets, as well as dozens of armored Humvees and some aircraft.
The general added that the equipment had been disabled and in the end, none of it was mission capable.
Trump argued on Tuesday that leaving that equipment behind is “insane” and “inconceivable,” adding that “that equipment will be coming at us for many years.”
“We cannot let them [the Taliban] have that equipment,” Trump added. “That’s the finest equipment made.”
Trump also argued on Tuesday that ending America’s longest war “should have been a positive, but it was a massive negative by anybody who has a brain.”
“We were all set to have a victory in terms of getting out and getting out with dignity and you could even say with victory,” Trump told host Stuart Varney, stressing that it “was all lined up.”
“The Taliban was petrified of us,” the former president continued.
He went on to argue that “all” Biden had to do was “take what we did and finish it up and take all the equipment out.”
Trump also said Biden should have kept Afghanistan’s Bagram Airfield.
