Trump says he threatened to ‘obliterate’ Taliban leader
Former President Donald Trump claims he threatened to “obliterate” the co-founder of the Taliban if he stepped out of line — and even sent him a photo of his house to prove he could.
Trump, 76, told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that he threatened Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar during 18 months of talks from the White House before his successor, President Biden, ordered the “horrible withdrawal” from Afghanistan.
“I sent him a picture of his house,” Trump insisted of the leader dubbed “Baradar the Butcher” who is now deputy prime minister after the Taliban seized power.
“He said, ‘But why but why do you send me a picture of my house?’ I said, ‘You’ll have to figure that one out,’” Trump claimed in the second part of his sit-down interview, aired late Thursday.
“I said, ‘If you do anything, we’re going to hit you harder than any country has ever been hit.’
“He said, ‘I understand, your excellency.’ He called me your excellency — I don’t know if he calls Biden” that, he insisted.
Trump noted how he had “wanted to get out” of Afghanistan and had been the one to whittle the US presence “down to very few soldiers.”
“We would have had a very similar schedule, but I would have taken the military out last,” he insisted, saying he would have also not allowed $85 billion worth of “the best military equipment in the world” be “left behind.”
Instead, Biden’s “horrible withdrawal” led to 13 service members getting blown up in horrifying scenes of chaos at Kabul airport in August last year.
“We lost 13 soldiers, and we also had a large number of soldiers horribly wounded — no legs, no arms, their face blown to smithereens,” Trump told Hannity.
He also insisted that “a lot of bad people” were also able to flee Afghanistan in the mass of people cramming into jets unchecked in the rush to flee.
“A lot of bad people got on those airplanes. Bad people — terrorists,” he insisted.
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