The truth about Trump’s meeting with ‘Abdul’ the Taliban ‘leader’ whose house ‘he threatened to blow up’
- Trump referred to negotiations with ‘Abdul’
- He said he told Abdul ‘don’t do it again’ regarding the attacks on the US
Former President Donald Trump gave viewers a headache during the debate with a bizarre statement about negotiating with a senior Taliban official he identified as “Abdul” and threatening to destroy his home.
Trump didn’t give him his full name, but he did call him the “head” of the Taliban, which only raised more questions, since the Taliban leader doesn’t go by that name.
It began after ABC’s David Muir questioned Vice President Kamala Harris about the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, prompting her to argue that the U.S. withdrawal was under the terms of a deal negotiated by the Trump administration.
“He bypassed the Afghan government. He negotiated directly with a terrorist organization called the Taliban,” Harris said, referring to talks Trump Secretary of State Mike Pompeo held in Doha.
He was most likely referring to Taliban policy chief Abdul Ghani Baradar, who negotiated with Pompeo. But he is not really the head of the organization, although he is in the top echelon. He is currently first deputy prime minister.
“I got involved. And Abdul is the head of the Taliban. He’s still the head of the Taliban,” Trump said during the debate, which drew nearly 60 million viewers.
Former President Donald Trump left viewers scratching their heads with a story about showing a photo of his house to “Abdul,” whom he called the leader of the Taliban
Then Trump referred to making a threat, suggesting it was to ensure peace. “And I said to Abdul, ‘Don’t do it anymore. If you do it anymore, you’re going to get in trouble.’ And he said, ‘Why are you sending me a picture of my house?’ I said, ‘You’re going to have to figure that out for yourself, Abdul.’ And for 18 months, nobody got killed.”
Trump has told the story before, including Sean Hannity on Fox News in 2022, when he said he told the Afghan, “Don’t do it.”
“It was strong. And he understood it,” Trump added.
The Taliban is led by Hibatullah Akhundzada, who has held the post since 2016.
Trump then said he would leave Afghanistan “faster” than President Joe Biden’s administration, even though there were still 2,500 U.S. troops there when Biden took power.
Trump may have been referring to Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban-appointed deputy prime minister
Trump’s comment came after Vice President Kamala Harris criticized him for negotiating with the Taliban
“It was a very good deal. The reason it was good was that we got out. We would have gotten out faster than they did, but we wouldn’t have lost the soldiers. We wouldn’t have left many Americans behind.”
While the Biden administration has acknowledged that things did not go according to plan, it has blamed the agreement for setting a withdrawal date and the fact that the US does not have enough troops to support the Afghan government when the Taliban made sudden territorial gains.
Harris noted that the deal with the Taliban also “involved the Taliban releasing 5,000 terrorists,” a factor the White House cited this week as a contributing factor to the fall of the Afghan government.
Harris smiled and turned her head away from Trump as he told the “Abdul” story.
Online observers included A former Wall Street Journal reported that the Tablians relied more on IEDs than snipers. A spokesman also pointed out that there was no 18-month period during Trump’s tenure in which no American forces were killed.