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President Donald Trump ripped Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris Tuesday evening during the presidential debate on ABC after she appeared to have zero regrets for the botched withdrawal in Afghanistan that killed 13 military service members.
Trump and Harris took the stage Tuesday evening in their first debate moderated by ABC News’ David Muir and Lindsey Davis. During a question about the vice president’s role in the disastrous withdrawal, Trump slammed Harris after she attempted to gloss over her responsibility and reverted to calling Trump’s negotiation “one of the weakest deals.”
Trump began by explaining why he reached out to the Taliban as they had been responsible for a significant number of American deaths before he focused on the botched departure from the Middle East.
“For 18 months we had nobody killed. We did have an agreement negotiated by Mike Pompeo, it was a very good agreement. The reason it was good – we were getting out, we would’ve been out faster than them, but we wouldn’t have lost the soldiers. We wouldn’t have left many Americans behind and we wouldn’t have left $85 billion dollars worth of brand new beautiful military equipment behind,” Trump said in response.
“They blew it. The agreement said you have to do this, this, this, this, this and they didn’t do it. They didn’t do it. The agreement was terminated by us because they didn’t do what they were supposed to do. And these people did the worst withdrawal, and in my opinion, the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country. And by the way, that’s why Russia attacked Ukraine because they saw how incompetent she and her boss are,” Trump continued.
Prior to Trump’s response, Muir had asked Harris if she believed she bore “any responsibility” in how the withdrawal played out.
“Well I will tell you I agreed with President Biden’s decision to pull out of Afghanistan. Four president’s said they would and Joe Biden did. And as a result America’s taxpayers are not paying the $300 million a day we were paying for that endless war,” Harris said.
During the withdrawal, Harris touted that she had been “the last person in the room” with Biden, telling CNN’s Dana Bash that she felt “comfortable” with the decision.
In early September, Harris attempted to call out Trump on X for filming during his visit to Arlington National Cemetery as he honored the 13 service members with their Gold Star families in attendance. In response, eight Gold Star family members posted videos explaining how they invited Trump to the ceremony and ripped Harris as she and Biden were notably not in attendance despite being invited.
“You have to put yourself in our shoes, if you lost your son or daughter to terrible tragedy, especially from this administration, you’d want leadership there, you want a president to be there honoring your child, I mean who wouldn’t want that. We’ve always been pretty fair from the very beginning — wanting to get answers, wanting to talk to this White House and this administration, wanting to talk with Kamala, wanting to talk to Joe. They just ignore us, they literally walk the other direction,” Gold Star father of Marine Lance Corporal Jared Schmitz, Mark Schmitz, told Fox Business.
