Former President Donald Trump went on air on Tuesday to criticize President Joe Biden's mishandling of the U.S. troops pullout from Afghanistan, which originally had a deadline of May 2021, but was extended by President Biden to September. This Sunday's capture of Afghanistan's capital of Kabul plunged the Middle Eastern country in chaos, with the Afghan president fleeing for his safety.
"I don't think in all of the years our country has ever been so humiliated," Trump said in an appearance on Fox News' "Hannity" on Tuesday, as reported by the Christian Post. "There's never been anything like what's happened here."
Trump, who reiterated his long standing support for withdrawing the U.S. troops from Afghanistan, added that "It's a great thing that we're getting out but nobody has ever handled a withdrawal worse than Joe Biden. This is the greatest embarrassment, I believe, in the history of our country."
Trump's Vice President, Mike Pence, echoed the former president's sentiments in a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Tuesday, writing, "The Biden administration's disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan is a foreign-policy humiliation unlike anything our country has endured since the Iran hostage crisis."
Trump, who said in April this year (via Axios) that "getting out of Afghanistan is a wonderful and positive thing to do" and in June that (via Rev) he "started the process, all the troops are coming back home," blasted President Biden for not sticking to the plans for a smooth transition.
The Republican leader explained that the Biden administration should have the "people come out first," then the "military equipment-billions and billions of dollars worth of new black hawk helicopters, brand new, that Russia now will be examining, and so will China and so will everybody else."
Trump argued that the Biden administration should have "gotten the civilians out first," then the military equipment, then the soldiers. He warned that the "billions of dollars of brand new beautiful equipment" arre "being now used by the enemy" and that President Biden should have ordered to "blow up all the forts" before they left.
Insider reported on Thursday that President Biden's approval rating has dipped below 50% for the first time since taking office in January, according to polling trackers FiveThirtyEight and Real Clear Politics. FiveThirtyEight recorded an average approval of 49.3% and an approval rating of 44.2%, a decrease from February's 54.7% and July's 52.7%. In July, 42.7% of respondents disapproved of the Democratic president. Real Clear Politics on the other hand recorded an approval rating of 49.4% and a 47.2% disapproval rating.
A Trafalgar Group poll also found that 69.3% of Americans disapproved of Biden's handling of the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. The poll also showed that the majority of Republicans and independent-identifying folks, as well as 48.2% of Democrats, disapproved of the president's recent foreign policy strategies involving Afghanistan.
