Former President Trump on Monday slammed President Biden and Vice President Harris for overseeing a “collapse of American credibility and respect” in Afghanistan on the three-year anniversary of a bombing at the Kabul airport that killed 13 U.S. service members and more than 100 Afghans.
Trump, speaking at a National Guard Association of the U.S. conference in Detroit, said the Afghanistan withdrawal was “the most embarrassing day in the history of our country” and has ignited conflict across the globe.
“It gave us Russia going into Ukraine. It gave us the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, because it gave us lack of respect. We’re not respected,” Trump said.
Trump made the comments following a stop at Arlington National Cemetery to meet with the family members of some service members killed by an ISIS-K suicide bomber at the Kabul airport’s Abbey Gate exactly three years ago.
“We will never forget those brave warriors who made the supreme sacrifice for our country,” Trump said of the 13 troops who died. “They will live in our hearts forever.”
The chaotic 2021 Afghanistan exit, a stain on the Biden administration’s record, has pushed some Gold Star families of the troops killed at Abbey Gate to join Republican criticism, including in July at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
The GOP is seeking to tie Harris to the chaotic exit after Biden decided not to seek reelection and instead endorsed his vice president, who formally accepted the presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last week.
Republicans argue Harris was central to the decisionmaking behind Afghanistan, pointing out she was the last in the room when Biden made the exit plans.
Trump was joined onstage Monday by former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii), an ex-Democrat and retired Army Reserve officer who became an independent and leaned more conservative after running for president in the Democratic primaries in 2020.
Gabbard, who formally endorsed Trump at the event, said she joined Trump at Arlington National Cemetery on Monday and “felt and saw his sincere appreciation for these servicemen and women who paid the ultimate price, and their loved ones who continue to grieve to this day.”
She also said Trump would prevent global conflicts from spreading further out of control.
“This [Biden] administration has us facing multiple wars on multiple fronts and regions around the world, and closer to the brink of nuclear war than we ever have been before,” she said. “I am confident that [Trump’s] first task will be to do the work to walk us back from the brink of war.”
Trump spent most of the speech talking about the U.S.-Mexico border, vowing to seal it off and stop the flow of migration into the U.S., but he also talked about military policy priorities, including creating a national guard for the Space Force, ending the war in Ukraine and preventing what he claims is a possible World War III.
Trump also pledged there would be consequences for those responsible for the Afghanistan withdrawal.
“We’ll get the resignations of every single senior official who touched the Afghanistan calamity to be on my desk at noon on inauguration day,” he said. “You know you have to fire people. You have to fire people when they do a bad job.”
During the withdrawal, fleeing Afghans were seen clinging to the backs of transport planes in widely shared photographs, and as the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan, the Taliban swept to power within days, displacing the American-backed Afghan government and military largely unopposed.
While the Biden administration did not hold any public events, it still marked the three-year anniversary of the Kabul airport bombing.
In a statement, Biden called the fallen service members “patriots in the highest sense” and said that “we owe them and their families a sacred debt we will never be able to fully repay, but will never cease working to fulfill.”
White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters Monday there were “many ways that we as a nation and our leaders can observe the third anniversary of Abbey Gate.”
“Mr. Trump was invited by at least one, I think maybe several of the families, to lay a wreath at Arlington and that is certainly a way to recognize the sacrifice and the loss, but it was a personal invitation by families,” he said.
“Another way is to continue to work, maybe not with a lot of fanfare, maybe not with a lot of public attention,” Kirby added, “to make sure the families of those of the fallen and of those who were injured and wounded, not just at Abbey Gate, but over the course of the 20 some odd years in Afghanistan, have the support that they need.”
While the Biden administration has sought to pin the blame on the Trump administration, arguing it inherited conditions and a deadline to leave the country, both the Biden and Trump administrations were blamed in a 2023 State Department report.
Trump claimed Monday that he would have ordered evacuations out of Bagram Airfield instead of Kabul’s airport, a point that some former U.S. generals have raised.