Ex-Trump Adviser Drops Bombshell About Trump’s Taliban Deal
Donald Trump may have made the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan worse for President Biden.
General H.R. McMaster told CNN’s Anderson Cooper Monday night that Trump, while president, sought to negotiate with the Taliban as U.S. troops began leaving Afghanistan, which undermined the Afghan government. As a result, the U.S. government forced the Afghan government to release 5,000 members of the Taliban.
Cooper: The Trump Administration forced the Afghan government to release 5,000 Taliban?
— Acyn (@Acyn) August 27, 2024
McMaster: Correct. pic.twitter.com/Oq9Nd69G17
The former national security adviser was on CNN to discuss his new book, At War With Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House. The revelation puts the chaos of the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan into greater context, as conservatives sought to lay much of the blame onto Biden and successfully pushed that narrative into media coverage.
It’s the latest damaging revelation from McMaster’s book. Last week, an early excerpt from the book detailed how Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin was able to manipulate Trump by playing on his “ego and insecurities.” On Monday, another newly revealed excerpt described meetings in the Oval Office as “exercises in competitive sycophancy” where Trump made particularly “outlandish” suggestions, including one instance in which he asked, “Why don’t we just bomb the drugs?” in regards to narcotics in Mexico.
McMaster is one of many of Trump’s former national security officials to criticize the now convicted felon for his conduct as president. One of his other former national security advisers, John Bolton, said earlier this month that Trump “can’t tell the difference between what’s true and what’s false.”
Former White House chief of staff John Kelly has described the former president as “a person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about.… A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law. There is nothing more that can be said.”
“God help us.”