Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign is marking the five-year anniversary of a series of social media posts in which former President Donald Trump said he’d invited Taliban leaders to Camp David to meet with him and the president of Afghanistan, arguing that Trump’s “chaotic actions” led to the “catastrophic consequences” in Afghanistan.
In a statement on Saturday, Harris campaign national security spokesperson Morgan Finkelstein cited Trump’s handling of Afghanistan as an example of foreign policy that “put our troops in harm’s way.”
“Trump shamelessly attacks the Vice President because he hopes he can trick the country into forgetting that his own actions undermined U.S. strategy and put our troops and allies in harm’s way. Trump wanted to bring the Taliban to Camp David just days before September 11th—think about that. He cut a bad deal with the very same people who violently took over Afghanistan, leading to the collapse of the Afghan government. Trump’s chaotic actions led to catastrophic consequences in Afghanistan,” Finkelstein said in the statement.
The statement comes as Trump and his allies have repeatedly sought to link Harris to the chaotic and deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.
Remember: In September 2019, Trump said Taliban leaders were set to travel to the US for secret peace talks but that the meeting was canceled and he called off peace talks with the militant group entirely. Trump posted on Twitter, now X, that he scrapped the meeting after the Taliban took credit for an attack in Kabul that killed a dozen people, including an American soldier.
More context: Trump promised to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan during his presidency. His administration set the final withdrawal in motion by negotiating and signing a deal with the Taliban in 2020 that stipulated the drawdown of US service members in Afghanistan.
After Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, he fired his defense secretary at the time, Mark Esper, purged many top officials at the Pentagon and tried to further accelerate US drawdowns, both in Afghanistan and in Europe.
Biden reversed the drawdown of service members in Europe but delayed by only a few months Trump’s plans to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan, despite worsening conditions on the ground and rapid gains by the Taliban.
Retired Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, who served as national security adviser under Trump, said last month that his onetime boss bears some responsibility for what was ultimately a chaotic withdrawal.
