Donald Trump responded quickly on Thursday after the White House issued a report eviscerating his handling of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The former president remains at home in Florida after returning from Manhattan where he faced criminal indictment on 34 counts of falsifying business records earlier this week.
In a Truth Social post, he wrote: “These Morons in the White House, who are systematically destroying our Country, headed up by the biggest Moron of them all, Hopeless Joe Biden, have a new disinformation game they are playing - Blame “TRUMP” for their grossly incompetent SURRENDER in Afghanistan.
“I watched this disaster unfold just like everyone else. I saw them take out the Military FIRST, GIVE $85 Billion of military equipment, allow killing of our soldiers, and leave Americans behind. Biden is responsible, no one else!”, the post continued.
It was typical of the former president’s style: heavy on combativeness, light on factuality. The actual amount of equipment left behind in Afghanistan following the US withdrawal is thought to be just above $7bn, most of it technically the property of the country’s now-defunct former government.
Afghanistan’s security forces deserted the battlefield in 2021 as the Taliban advanced at a speed that shocked the Pentagon and caught US forces off guard.
The Biden administration at the time oversaw a chaotic and at time panicked evacuation from Kabul as the Taliban seized the city and other population centres across the country.
More than a dozen US troops were killed during the operation as a result of an Islamic State-aligned suicide bomber.
In the report released on Thursday, the Biden White House faulted the Trump administration’s agreement with the Taliban for a peaceful withdrawal of US forces that left the US with only a few thousand troops in the country when the pullout’s final stages began and Taliban forces were running rampant across the countryside.
