Although President Joe Biden and the U.S. military withdrew from Afghanistan without conditions, former President Donald Trump did issue one mea culpa on Newsmax: hiring "woke" White House Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley, who showed his "gross incompetence."
"When he went and took that walk, and then he apologized because the radical left started getting on him, I realized I had a loser," Trump told Wednesday's "Greg Kelly Reports" about Milley's apology of the walk to the church set on fire by rioters outside the White House after George Floyd was killed by a police officer in Minneapolis.
"And I paid very little respect to him. He wasn't very good. So I am not a fan of his."
Trump told host Greg Kelly he took a failed gamble on Milley after former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who was fired by Trump, had come out adamantly against Milley.
Trump has long blasted "Mad Dog" Mattis as the "most overrated" military leader, so he figured if Mattis did not like Milley, he just might work out. Trump admitted to Kelly that he was woefully wrong.
"We did a great job without Mattis," Trump said. "Once I got rid of Mattis, we took over — we knocked out ISIS and everything else.
"I said, 'if he hates Milley that much, maybe the guy will be all right."
Trump added that although Milley was not only recommended by Mattis but also by other military officials, he did not think highly of either, calling them ''a couple of people that I thought were just absolutely terrible."
"Not highly, but he was recommended by sort of the next guy in there," Trump continued. "But in retrospect, I would not have made that decision again."
Like Biden, Milley owns the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban this week after the movement was overthrown after the U.S. military invasion in 2001.
"And look at what he's done," Trump concluded. "He took the military out before he got the civilians out, before he got U.S. citizens out, so that would show gross incompetence."
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Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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