Chris Wallace Confronts Pompeo Over Trump Admin’s Afghanistan Approach: ‘Do You Regret’ Giving Taliban ‘Legitimacy’?

As the Biden administration deals with Afghanistan’s fall to the Taliban, Fox News’ Chris Wallace pressed former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on how much responsibility for the situation lies with the former Trump administration.

Pompeo gave an interview to Wallace on Fox News Sunday where he pronounced the debacle a failure for the Biden administration, and he argued that the U.S. “should go crush the Taliban who are surrounding Kabul, we can do it with American air power. We should put pressure on them, we should inflict cost and pain on them.” At one point, Wallace brought up Biden’s defense of the U.S.’ withdrawal, particularly the part where the president blamed Donald Trump by saying he was operating off of the situation that his predecessor left for him.

Asked what he thinks about Biden blaming him and Trump for the chaos, Pompeo snapped back at the president’s “pathetic blame-shifting,” and he argued that the Taliban’s insurgency didn’t happen while Trump was still in power.

“Every president confronts challenges,” he said. “This president confronted a challenge in Afghanistan, he has utterly failed to protect the American people from this challenge.”

Wallace kept up the pressure by noting that Pompeo struck an agreement with the Taliban last year to pull U.S. forces out of Afghanistan by May. Wallace also rolled footage of Trump complaining about the U.S’ “ridiculous” continued presence in the region.

Pompeo responded by defending his diplomatic efforts, and he ripped Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani over his conduct in office (Ghani reportedly fled the country earlier today). Wallace concluded his questioning of Pompeo’s record by noting that Pompeo was the first American secretary of state to ever meet with the Taliban for those talks.

“Do you regret giving the Taliban that legitimacy?” Wallace asked. “Do you regret pressing the Afghan government to release 5,000 prisoners, which they did, some of whom are now back on the battlefield fighting with the Taliban?”

“You make peace with your enemies,” Pompeo said, before adding shortly afterwards that “we never trusted the Taliban.”

“We didn’t take the word of the Taliban, we watched their actions on the ground,” he said. “When they did the right thing and helped us against terror, that was all good, and when they didn’t, we crushed them.”

Watch above, via Fox News Sunday.