Former President Trump in an interview suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin “got a little more ambition” after the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021.
“I think it was the most embarrassing period, the way we withdrew — not the fact that we withdrew — the way we withdrew from Afghanistan. And I think Putin actually saw that and he probably got a little more ambition, frankly,” Trump said in an interview with Mark Levin, aired Sunday on “Life, Liberty & Levin” on Fox News.
Trump said of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan that “it was enough,” but suggested that the U.S. missed the chance to pull out “with dignity and strength.”
The U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021, shortly after Biden took over the White House from Trump, and was able to evacuate some 124,000 people, but the chaotic pull-out has come under scrutiny.
A White House outline of a Pentagon report released earlier this month blames the Trump administration for a lack of preparation headed into the withdrawal, which then burdened the Biden administration.
Trump in his interview with Levin also suggested that Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley “should be court-martialed” over the withdrawal.
“When I was gone, they did the withdrawal. Milley should be court martialed. They did a withdrawal … where the soldiers came out first. If you asked a five year old child [for] strategy, the soldiers come out last,” Trump said.
Trump was appearing on Levin’s program to promote his new book, “Letters to Trump,” which includes messages to the former president from high-profile political and celebrity figures.
“You have really fascinating letters in here from Putin, from Xi, from Un in North Korea, and I can go on and what I noticed there’s a common thread,” Levin said to Trump during the interview. “You had a personal relationship with every one of these leaders, whether they’re genocidal maniacs, whether they’re elected.”
Trump didn’t talk at length on Putin, but mentioned fraught relations between Washington and Moscow after Russia detained a Wall Street Journal reporter on spying allegations.
“They just grabbed a reporter, which is unheard of, just they’re holding now a reporter. I guess it hasn’t happened in many decades. What’s going on? We are at, in my opinion, because of the power of weaponry, mostly nuclear, but other things also, we are in the most dangerous position we’ve ever been in as a nation right now,” Trump said.
He also drew attention to recent reports that Putin is moving nuclear weapons into neighboring Belarus as it continues its war on Ukraine.