Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) bluntly directed blame at both former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden for the ongoing crisis in Afghanistan, slamming Trump for making the deal with the Taliban to withdraw American troops, and Biden for going along with it and how he has executed the withdrawal.
CNN’s Erin Burnett asked Kinzinger about Biden’s comments at a press conference earlier in the day, in which he mentioned the deal struck by his predecessor.
Biden, Burnett summarized, had said that if he had come in “and said forget it, I’m going the trash that deal and stay in…he would have had to put thousands more troops back into Afghanistan to fight a war. Do you think he’s right? Is that fair?”
Kinzinger agreed with Biden that remaining in Afghanistan would have required more troops, pointing out how for a “significant” period we had had “upwards of over 100,00o troops in Afghanistan,” and Trump had reduced U.S. troops from 5,000 to 2,500 at the end of 2020.
“He did that, so that he could kinda box Joe Biden in,” said Kinzinger. “Joe Biden would have to increase the troop level or withdraw everybody.”
“But, look, both people bear blame here,” he continued. “I know in such a tribal moment that we live in, we can’t fathom that both Republicans
“Donald Trump set up a deal,” he explained, “that would make Neville Chamberlain blush.” Chamberlain, of course was the UK Prime Minister who became known for his policy of appeasement, specifically for his signing of the 1938 Munich Agreement with Adolf Hitler which ceded the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia to Germany in what would be viewed as an utterly failed effort to contain Hitler’s ambitions and prevent World War II.
Trump, said Kinzinger, had been saying “this war’s not worth it, we’re gonna leave, my goal is to leave, it’s an endless war,” and then empowered former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to negotiate a deal “in that context,” and he ended up negotiating a “bad deal,” where the Taliban didn’t follow the deal but the Trump administration “still went forward as if this deal was working.”
“And then after he got out of office, he said ‘I boxed Joe Biden in.'”
Kinzinger didn’t spare Biden, noting how the president had “reversed a lot of President Trump’s stuff,” including sanctions, but he still kept with this decision to leave Afghanistan.
Biden “owns this decision as much as President Trump,” said Kinzinger, and Biden was the one who was responsible for the problems
“I just think both Republicans and Democrats have failed the American people.”
Watch the video above, via CNN.