Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) blasted Joe Biden on Fox News Radio’s Fox Across America on Friday, blaming the botched withdrawal and terror attack on Joe Biden wanting a “photo op for September 11.”
Joe Biden announced in mid-April that all military forces would be withdrawn from Afghanistan by September 11, 2021—the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. At the time, Senator Chuck Schumer praised the revised timetable. “It’s refreshing to have a thought-out plan with a set timetable,” Schumer said.
The agreement reached between the Trump administration and the Taliban in February 2020 required the Taliban to end all attacks on our troops, refuse safe harbor for terrorists, and negotiate with Afghan leaders on creating a new government. As long as the Taliban lived up to these conditions, the United States would gradually withdraw. The plan was unanimously endorsed by the United Nations Security Council and resulted in tremendous stability, and the United States hadn’t suffered a single combat casualty in the country in eighteen months, even with a small presence of only 2,500 U.S. troops, the smallest military presence since military operations began in 2001. This was possible, former Vice President Pence explained earlier this month, because the Taliban understood “that the consequences of violating the deal would be swift and severe.”
Related: Two Days After Terror Attack in Kabul, U.S. Forces Are Leaving Afghanistan
“Let’s be very clear on this, there is no way that Donald Trump would have allowed what’s happened over the last month to occur under his watch,” Rep. Donalds told Fox Across America host Jimmy Failla. “Because when the Taliban was violating portions of that agreement that they made, then the Trump administration responded in kind and did not just continue down the agreement as if the Taliban was doing everything that they said they were going to do.”
“They held the Taliban accountable at every step of the way,” Donalds continued. “Joe Biden did not. Joe Biden said, ‘Oh, look, I’ll just move the deadline down a little bit, but I’m just going to get out while the getting’s good. Because I want a photo op for September 11.’ And that’s the reality. That is the truth, and now we have dead servicemen as a result. This has been a disaster for our country.”
Listen to the show here.
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