Former president says Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Hamas’s attack on Israel would not have happened if he was in office, during North Carolina stump speech.
Former President Donald Trump said the carnage that unfolded on Aug. 26, 2021, at Kabul’s airport set the stage for “all these wars starting all over the place,” putting the planet “very close to a third world war.”
“Since the Afghanistan catastrophe, it’s been open season on America and our allies,” Trump said during a 70-minute Aug. 21 stump at Asheboro Regional Airport in North Carolina.
During the United States’ evacuation from Afghanistan, a terrorist bombing killed nearly 200 people, including 13 U.S. Marines and soldiers.
Trump blamed the catastrophe and its fallout squarely on President Joe Biden and 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris describing it as “the most humiliating event in the history of our country.”
His address featured little policy, other than ensuring that the nation’s military remains the world’s strongest. He compared the relative peace of his 2016–2020 tenure with what has unfolded since.
“We defeated ISIS, we killed the world’s top terrorists. We secured our borders. We achieved energy independence. We stood up to China, we protected Israel. We made peace in the Middle East with the Abraham accords,” he said.
If elected, Trump said he’d end the Russia–Ukraine war before being inaugurated.
The rally was his second in seven days in North Carolina. At an Aug. 14 rally in Asheville, he discussed his economic platform. He also campaigned in Charlotte on July 24, three days after Biden dropped out of the race.
North Carolina is a key purple state, with 7.6 million registered voters and 16 electoral votes.
As of Aug. 17, the state’s Board of Elections had recorded more registered Democrats—2.4 million—than the 2.27 million signed on with the GOP. The state’s 2.85 million unaffiliated voters are the target of both campaigns.
Trump defeated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by 3.6 percent in 2016 and Biden by 1.34 percent in 2020 in the state.
An Aug. 9–Aug. 14 New York Times/Siena College poll of 655 North Carolinians showed Harris leading Trump, 49 percent to 47 percent.
Trump said if he had been in the White House for the past four years, the world would be a safer place.
Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine “would have never happened,” he said, and neither would Israel have been attacked by Hamas last year.
Trump said he had gotten along with China during his tenure. “[But] what’s happening right now? They’re planning an attack on Taiwan,” he said.
Meanwhile, Iran is building a nuclear weapon, he said.
Yet he wouldn’t need military force to dissuade adversaries. “Mostly,” he said, “I can do it with a telephone call.”
The former president said Harris was pivotal in the “Afghanistan catastrophe,” noting she “bragged she would be the last person in the room and she was—she was the last person in the room with Biden when [they] decided to pull the troops out of Afghanistan.”
He said the $85 billion in equipment left behind by the United States had made the Taliban “one of the largest arms merchants anywhere in the world.”
Pentagon officials have noted in hearings that the equipment belonged to Afghanistan’s armed forces, having been provided as congressionally approved military assistance during the 21-year war.
“China is occupying” Bagram Air Base, Trump said, noting he would have retained the base—a recent nuance.
While there are no Chinese troops currently occupying the base, Chinese jets have used it, and Chinese military trainers have been allegedly sighted there, Pentagon officials have acknowledged in congressional hearings since 2022.
By noon on Inauguration Day, Trump said, he would demand “the resignations of every single senior military official who touched the Afghanistan disaster,” a “house cleaning” that would “be a signal to the entire world.”
But first things first. “Comrade Harris,” he said, “you’re fired.”