President Trump took a potshot Tuesday at retired Gen. Mark Milley, the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recounting how the officer allegedly argued it would be too costly to take military hardware out of Afghanistan ahead of the 2021 US withdrawal.
During a riff on Afghanistan inspired by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth bragging about Trump restoring deterrence via last month’s Operation Midnight Hammer strikes on Iran, the president recalled clashing with Milley over how to properly pull out from Afghanistan after nearly two decades of military involvement.
“But with all that equipment that they left, they should have taken every ounce of it. I said, ‘Every screw, every bolt, every nail you take out of there.’ And Milley said, I remember one time, ‘Sir, we’re better off leaving the equipment.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Well, it’s cheaper,” Trump recounted during a Cabinet meeting.
“That’s when I knew he was an idiot,” the president swiped. “Didn’t take long to figure that one out. But they left all that equipment. But they left their dignity behind. It was the most embarrassing moment, in my opinion, in the history of our country.
“Not that we got out. We should have not been there, but that we got out the way we got out with great embarrassment and death.”
Milley, who has previously described his old boss as “fascist to the core,” did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump appointed Milley to the post of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2019, and he served through 2023.
In early 2020, Trump’s representatives had negotiated an agreement with the Taliban for the US to withdraw from Afghanistan, provided the Taliban cut ties with terror groups and obey other criteria
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When former President Joe Biden went ahead with the disastrous withdrawal that led to the Western-backed government collapsing and the Taliban roaring back to power, Trump admonished his predecessor for the chaos.
The Taliban confiscated some $7 billion worth of American military hardware, a 2022 Department of Defense report concluded, though military experts predicted that much of that materiel wouldn’t be operational for long without US maintenance.
“The outcome in Afghanistan was the result of many decisions from many years of war,” Milley testified last year to the GOP-led House Committee on Foreign Affairs. “Like any complex phenomena, there was no single causal factor that determined the outcome.”
Back in May, Hegseth announced that the Pentagon would be conducting a probe of the withdrawal.
“The Department of Defense has an obligation, both to the American people and to the warfighters who sacrificed their youth in Afghanistan, to get to the facts,” he wrote in the memo at the time.
“This remains an important step toward regaining faith and trust with the American people and all those who wear the uniform and is prudent based on the number of casualties and equipment lost during the execution of this withdrawal operation.”
Before departing the White House, Biden issued Milley a pre-emptive pardon due to fears that Trump would seek retribution against him. Earlier this year, Hegseth pulled Milley’s security clearance.
