Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign is revisiting former President Donald Trump’s 2020 deal with the Taliban, as the Republican nominee has repeatedly criticized her for the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan during President Biden’s first year in office.
August 26 marks three years since the Abbey Gate suicide bombing outside Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, which killed 13 U.S. service members, wounded 18 others, and killed approximately 170 Afghans.
In a speech at Detroit celebrates this dayTrump blamed both Harris and Mr Biden for the “humiliation in Afghanistan”.
In a response shared for the first time with CBS News, Harris’ campaign uses Trump’s announcement, and abrupt cancellation five years ago, of a meeting at Camp David with Taliban leaders to emphasize the role her deal with the Taliban played in the withdrawal.
The campaign argues that Trump’s deal created a “virtually impossible” deadline and left “the Biden-Harris administration with no plan for an orderly withdrawal — only a dangerous and costly mess.”
“Trump is shamelessly attacking the vice president because he hopes to fool the country into forgetting that his own actions put soldiers in harm’s way,” Morgan Finkelstein, a national security spokesperson for Harris’ campaign, told CBS News. “Trump wanted to bring the Taliban to Camp David just days before 9/11 — think about that. He made a bad deal with the same people who violently took over Afghanistan and led to the collapse of the Afghan government.”
On September 7, 2019, Trump tweeted that a meeting with the Taliban had been canceled after a U.S. soldier was killed in an attack by the terrorist group. Months later, February 2020Trump signed a deal with the Taliban to pave the way for a significant withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan by the end of that year, in exchange for guarantees from the Taliban that the country would not be used for terrorist activities.
Taliban attacks on Afghan forces have continued, however. Former Trump national security adviser HR McMaster called the deal a “surrender deal with the Taliban” in a podcast interview.
CBS News has reached out to the Trump campaign for a response to the Harris campaign’s criticism.
The attack at Kabul airport came as Mr Biden was trying to evacuate US troops and Afghans from Afghanistan, part of a long-standing goal shared by him and Trump of formally ending the long war. currently investigating the withdrawal of the Biden administration.
Mr Biden has criticized Trump’s deal with the Taliban but implemented it by extending the withdrawal deadline by a few months to have troops withdrawn by September 11, 2021, to avoid further military escalation in the country.
“It may not be what I would have negotiated myself, but it was a deal that the United States government made, and that means something,” Biden said in April 2021.
A plurality of respondents in a CBS News August 2021 Poll They thought the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan had gone “very badly” and that’s when Mr Biden’s approval ratings began to decline steadily.
In recent weeks, Trump has allowed himself to be criticized more from Mr. Biden and Mr. Harris on the attack and the withdrawal.
In late August, Trump was invited to Arlington National Cemetery by family members of some of the military for a wreath-laying ceremony. The visit was overshadowed by an altercation between a cemetery employee and the Trump campaign over the presence of a campaign photographer, whom the families granted access to but who is prohibited by federal cemetery law.
In a speech at the National Guard Association conference in Detroit later in the day, Trump called for the resignations of Biden administration officials involved in the withdrawal.
“It’s unbelievable how stupid these people were, to allow this to happen to our country. And we became the laughing stock of the world, and we buried 13 soldiers,” he added.
In a statement that day, Harris reaffirmed her support for Mr. Biden’s decision to end the war and wrote that the 13 fallen service members “represent the best of America, putting our beloved nation and fellow Americans above themselves and deploying into harm’s way to keep their fellow citizens safe.”
Before becoming vice president, Harris had supported withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan and ending the war. In April 2021, she said she was the last person Mr. 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 importance of evacuating American citizens and Afghans working with the United States.
“There is no doubt that there will be and should be a thorough analysis of what happened,” she said. during a trip to Singapore in 2021.
contributed to this report.
