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Trump Is Blaming Biden and ‘the Woke Generals’ for Afghanistan

The former president neglected to mention that he wanted the U.S. to leave the country even sooner.
​Then-presidential candidate Donald Trump gave a speech at the Republican National Convention in 2016.
Then-presidential candidate Donald Trump gave a speech at the Republican National Convention in 2016. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

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According to former President Donald Trump, President Joe Biden and “the woke generals” are entirely to blame for the situation unfolding in Afghanistan, and a certain ex-president who left office in January had no role in it whatsoever.

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Trump went on Fox News Thursday night to blame his successor after an ISIS bomb attack outside the Kabul airport killed dozens of Afghan citizens and at least 13 members of the U.S. military. 

During the nearly 15-minute interview with Sean Hannity, Trump repeatedly referred to ISIS-K, a hard-line ISIS offshoot, as “ISIS-X,” while accusing Biden of making “the dumbest move ever made” in the history of the United States. He also suggested, for the second time, after a radio interview with conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt, that Osama bin Laden wasn’t all that big of a deal. 

“It’s so sad,” Trump said of the attack. “It’s the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to our country.” 

During the Trump administration, the U.S. and the Taliban signed an agreement that included the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO troops from the country after nearly 20 years of occupation. The plan under Trump was to complete the withdrawal by May 1 in exchange for the Taliban to end attacks on U.S. troops.

In April, when Biden announced September 11 as the withdrawal date from Afghanistan, Trump blasted the president for not sticking to the May 1 deadline. “Getting out of Afghanistan is a wonderful and positive thing to do,” Trump said in a statement at the time. “I planned to withdraw on May 1st, and we should keep as close to that schedule as possible.”

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To hear Trump tell it, though, it was all Biden’s fault. Trump took credit for having “knocked out 100 percent of the ISIS caliphate,” a claim Trump has repeated in the past that he walked back himself in 2019

Eventually, Trump corrected himself, but added, “they’re going to have a new ISIS-X pretty soon, which is going to be worse than ISIS-K.”

Earlier Thursday, Trump boasted about Iran General Qasem Soleimani and ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi being killed under his watch and said the two were “bigger by many, many times than Osama bin Laden,” the al-Qaeda leader and lead orchestrator of the September 11 attacks. “Osama bin Laden had one hit, and it was a bad one: in New York City, the World Trade Center,” Trump told Hewitt. “But these other two guys were monsters.” 

Trump repeated this during his interview with Hannity, saying al-Baghdadi was “far bigger than Osama bin Laden.” He conceded, however, that the 9/11 attacks were “a horrible thing.”