Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign is again bringing up the 2020 deal between former President Donald Trump and the Taliban. The Republican candidate has repeatedly criticized Trump for his chaotic withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan during Biden’s first year in office.
August 26 marks the third anniversary of the Avi Gate suicide bombing outside Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, which killed 13 U.S. service members, wounded 18, and killed about 170 Afghans.
During a speech Detroit Celebrates the DayTrump blamed Harris and Biden for the “humiliation in Afghanistan.”
In a response first shared with CBS News, Harris’ campaign used Trump’s announcement and then abrupt cancellation of a meeting with Taliban leaders at Camp David five years ago to highlight the central role that negotiations with the Taliban played in the withdrawal.
The campaign argues that Trump’s negotiations created an “almost impossible” deadline and that “the Biden-Harris administration has no plan for an orderly withdrawal, leaving behind only a dangerous and expensive mess.”
“Trump is shamelessly attacking the vice president because he hopes he can fool the American people into forgetting that his actions put our troops at risk,” Harris campaign national security spokeswoman Morgan Finkelstein told CBS News. “He wanted to bring the Taliban to Camp David a few days before September 11. Think about it. He made a bad deal with the very people who violently took over Afghanistan and led to the collapse of the Afghan government.”
On September 7, 2019, Trump tweeted that talks with the Taliban had been canceled after a U.S. soldier was killed in an attack by the terrorist group. A few months later, February 2020President Trump signed a deal with the Taliban that cleared the way for a significant reduction in U.S. troops in Afghanistan by the end of the year, in exchange for the Taliban providing assurances that Afghanistan would not be used for terrorist activities.
But Taliban attacks on Afghan forces continued. Trump’s former national security adviser, HR McMaster, called the deal a “surrender agreement with the Taliban” in a podcast interview.
CBS News has reached out to the Trump campaign for comment on the Harris campaign’s criticisms.
The attack at Kabul airport came as Mr. Biden was trying to evacuate U.S. troops and Afghans from Afghanistan, part of a goal he and Trump have long shared of formally ending the long-running war. House Republicans Currently under investigation The Biden administration’s withdrawal.
Mr Biden criticized Trump’s Taliban negotiations, but pushed through the deal, extending the deadline for withdrawing troops by several months to September 11, 2021, to avoid further military escalation in the country.
“It’s not something I would have negotiated myself, but it was an agreement made by the United States government, and that’s meaningful,” Biden said in April 2021.
The majority of respondents said CBS News Poll August 2021 He believed that the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan had been done “very badly,” and from that moment on, Biden’s approval ratings began to steadily decline.
In recent weeks, Trump has received more criticism Statement on the attacks and withdrawals by Mr. Biden and Harris.
In late August, Trump was invited to Arlington National Cemetery for a wreath-laying ceremony by some military families. The visit brawl There is a fight between cemetery staff and the Trump campaign over access to the campaign photographers. The family has given permission to enter, but federal law prohibits access to the cemetery.
Speaking at the National Guard Association conference in Detroit later that day, Trump called on Biden administration officials involved in the withdrawal to resign.
“I can’t even believe how stupid these people are, that they allowed this to happen in our country, and we became a laughing stock around the world, and we buried 13 soldiers,” he added.
Harris issued a statement that day reaffirming her support for Biden’s decision to end the war, writing that the 13 soldiers who died “represented the best of America, putting the interests of their beloved country and its people above themselves, and putting themselves at risk to ensure the safety of their fellow citizens.”
Before becoming vice president, Harris supported withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan and ending the war. In April 2021, she said she was the last person Biden consulted before the president decided to withdraw all remaining U.S. troops from Afghanistan.
As the chaotic withdrawal unfolded in August 2021, Harris stressed the focus on evacuating American citizens and Afghans who are working with the United States.
“There must be a robust analysis of what happened and there will be no doubt that there will be,” she said. Traveling in Singapore in 2021.
contributed to this report.
