The last thing President Joe Biden should have done – other than leaving the military to make sure Americans were evacuated out of Afghanistan – is allow U.S. weapons and equipment to fall into the hands of the Taliban, according to former President Donald Trump on Newsmax.
"The last thing that was coming out was our military," Trump told Wednesday's "Greg Kelly Reports." "And we were going to take all the civilians first. Second was going to be all of our equipment. We're taking it back."
Trump told host Greg Kelly he had numerous back-and-forth with "incompetent" generals who suggested it would be "cheaper" to just leave the weaponry and equipment on the battlefield.
"'Sir, it's cheaper to leave it,'" Trump recalled being told when he was president. "I said, 'if you think that general, then your incompetent.'
"You know, millions of dollars for tanks, and millions of dollars for Humvees that are armor plated – and now they have the Taliban flag on it. It's a horrible thing, but all this stuff was going to come out."
Trump blasted the Biden administration and Biden's failed military leaders for not following his "America first" plan.
"That was our plan, and it would have been very successful, but unfortunately they didn't do it that way," Trump continued to Kelly. "Look, I'm America first, O.K.? So are you. We want America first, meaning Americans come out first."
Trump also predicted, after myriad conversations on the Afghanistan withdrawal planning, the well-paid, well-equipped Afghanistan military – as hailed by Biden last month – would fold against the Taliban once the money stopped flowing from "American taxpayers."
"So they weren't really fighting for their country, and I've been saying that for a long time," Trump said, calling the U.S.-trained Afghanistan fighters that folded to the Taliban mercenaries and not true fighters.
"I had statements put out, I think five or six years ago that as soon as we leave, they'll stop fighting," Trump said. "That's why I wanted to take all the equipment because I knew that the enemy would grab the equipment, and that's exactly what they did. They grabbed the greatest equipment.
"They grabbed the greatest stuff anywhere in the world, and now they'll be given it to other nations so they can cheaply copy it.
"It's a horrible thing."
Trump also predicted exiled ex-Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani was a "crook," a "con man" bolstered by U.S. congressmen and women, and "bad news."
"He was bad news, Ghani; he was bad news," Trump told Kelly. "This guy, he was a con man, and now I guess they just got them leaving with a lot of money."
Ghani did come out earlier Wednesday saying he fled with millions of dollars of cash in bags to "avoid bloodshed" and not steal from the Afghan people.
"But I said he is not a leader," Trump concluded. "I said he will be out before the last soldiers are out. He will leave, and that's exactly what happened. I called it all the way."
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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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