Live from Virginia Wednesday morning on The John Fredericks Show – weekdays on WNTW AM 820/ FM 92.7 – Richmond, WJFN FM 100.5 – Central Virginia, WMPH AM 1010 / FM 100.1 / FM 96.9 (7-9 PM) Hampton Roads, WBRG AM 1050 / FM 105.1 – Lynchburg/Roanoke and Weekdays 6-10 am and 24/7 Stream –  host Fredericks welcomed former President Donald Trump to the show to discuss the incompetent exit from Afghanistan and how it could have been done better.
Fredericks: You’re on the John Fredericks Radio Network in the John Fredericks Radio app. Thanks for joining us today. As always, I am your Godzilla of the Truth in America, your Oracle of the Deplorables.
Joining me now, President Donald Trump, 45th president of the United States. Mr. President, thanks for joining us today. First, I want to just say thank you for allowing me to serve as you and your team as your Virginia campaign champion of both 2016 and 2020.
Sir, it was a real honor to be able to do that. And I thank you, sir, for that opportunity. And thank you for being with us today.
Trump: Well, thank you, John. And we actually did better in 2020 than we did in 2016, by a lot. (Chuckles) So it’s one of those very strange things that took place. But you were fantastic. And thank you very much.
Fredericks: Well, you won in 2020. So that’s the other thing. And we’re going to get to the bottom of this, sir. You in 2020. We got Arizona, we got Wisconsin, we got Pennsylvania. I’m very involved in Georgia. All this is coming out, sir. It’s going to prove that you are the duly elected president on November 3.
It’s all coming out. No question about it. Hey, just on a quick personal note, I’ve been with you a long time. You met my son, Joseph, who’s now 17 at the White House in 2018 when you honored the Astros, our team, for winning the Championship.
Trump: That’s right.
Fredericks: When you met him, you encouraged him to keep working hard. And he wanted me to tell you that he just got committed to pitch for West Virginia University in 23.
Trump: Wow. That’s a big deal. That’s great. Say hello to him.
Fredericks: I will. Thank you, Mr. President. In their haste to leave Afghanistan, the U.S. government abandoned nearly $100 billion of high-powered military equipment in arsenals, which is now fallen in the hands of the Taliban, ISIS, Al Qaeda, or worse.
According to The New York Times here’s what we left behind. Thirty-one thousand armored vehicles, 300 tanks, almost 50,000 other vehicles, 65,000 machine guns, 358 assault rifles, 126,000 handguns, 176 heavy artillery, and 175 various military aircraft. Mr. President, should this be the first exhibit in court marshalls and impeachments?
Trump: It’s the most incompetent thing I’ve ever seen. That and having the military leave before the civilians and all sorts of things. And, John, I can’t tell you how strong we were just prior to that. When I was there, I dealt with Abdul and we bombed the hell out of Abdul in the area.
And we came to a very conditional agreement. And when they didn’t meet conditions we’d bomb them and they’d meet the conditions and we had them in great shape. And as you know, they weren’t making any moves. They hadn’t shot one of our soldiers.
I said, if you kill an American soldier or an American, it’s going to be a bad bad week for you. And we went 18 months. You saw that. Eighteen months without having a soldier shot unlike Chicago and unlike New York and other places. We went 18 months without having one soldier shot.
And we had them in great shape. And I wanted to leave. But I wanted to leave with victory and dignity and all of the things. And I wanted every ounce of equipment. I said, every screw and every nail, every gun, you’re taking everything out.
And it’s the greatest form of incompetence. And then I saw the parents that had been disrespected yesterday. And with his watch. Looking down at his watch, that’s all he wanted to do. He was like, I want to get out of here. I’ve never seen anything like it.
And then I watch the fake news media try and say, well, he got out. And when I look at that equipment that’s left where you have literally thousands, hundreds of thousands of guns left behind. And by the way, these are weapons that are better than what we have.
They are newer. And the planes. And, you know, you just look from a common-sense standpoint, why wouldn’t you fly the planes out? You have many, many planes there. Why wouldn’t you at least fly them out?
Let’s say you have a problem with an army tank, which you don’t, they get onto a plane. But why wouldn’t you have flown all of those airplanes and the helicopters and the Apaches, which I don’t even want to tell you how much they cost each.
And they were brand new. Some of them were brand new. They hadn’t even virtually been used. And they’re massively expensive. Why wouldn’t you fly it out?
Just get some people, bring them in and let them make their journey back to this country. Go through Pakistan, go anywhere you want to go, and fly all of those billions of dollars worth of equipment out. It’s the most incompetent thing I’ve ever seen.
I’ve never seen anything like it. I thought the wall and the border were incompetent, John. It’s grossly incompetent because I really believe it’s incompetence. They can’t want prisoners pouring into our country, no matter how bad they are.
I view it as incompetence. A lot of people don’t. You don’t. But a lot of people don’t. But the wall and the whole thing, not finishing the wall in one month, they could have finished. It took me two and a half years to get it started with all of the Democrats’ litigation.
It was finished. It just had to be put together in the final little section and they could have finished it. But it was mostly finished anyway, almost 500 months. I thought the Southern border was incompetent. The southern border looks brilliant compared to what happened in Afghanistan.
Fredericks: Mr. President, you had the opportunity to engage with a lot of our military commanders that are there now. Lloyd Austin, General Milley, and McKenzie. Has our military command become incompetent, or has it just been woke and politicized? What happened here?
Trump: Well, I will say this. You have a lot of new ones that we didn’t see, people brought from the outside, because I had some very good people. I had generals. I call them the television generals. The ones you see on television have been horrible.
But we have great generals. I wiped out ISIS. 100 percent of the ISIS caliphate. And I was told, sir, it’ll take two years. And I went to Iraq and I met with certain generals, and they were phenomenal. You don’t see those generals on television, by the way.
And I said, how long will it take? They said, sir, we’ll have it done in four weeks. I said, four weeks? They’re telling me two years, Mattis. They’re telling me two years. What are you talking about? He said, so we’ll have it done. We knocked that out literally in four or five weeks.
Actually, he gave me a time where it was done in a quicker time than that. It was completed 100 percent. Do you remember when I had it at 99 percent? I said, all right, let’s come home. And everyone went crazy. Well, it’s not 100. You know, the fake news.
They said, well, it’s not 100. I said, all right, we’re gonna make it a hundred. And we made it 100 percent. Knocked it out. And we have great generals. And we have the greatest people, the greatest military people.
And they are highly disrespected. What’s happening here, they’re devastated because we could have gone out with great dignity, honor, and real victory. Because I had it set for victory. We were going to take everything.
First, civilians, the equipment. Then I was going to bomb certain bases. We were going to keep Bagram, it’s in the agreement. We would keep Bagram because it’s near China, and it’s great. You may need it for China more so than Afghanistan, to be honest.
But it would be a great thing. It cost them $10 billion to build it. They just turned off the lights and they fled, and they left the aircraft behind.
Fredericks: Incredible.
Trump: And I just asked this, because you’re a man of common sense, John. Great common sense. And your show is so incredible.
Fredericks: Thank you.
Trump: I just asked this, John. Why wouldn’t they have flown in 200 pilots, one plane, 200 pilots, and put pilots on each one of those planes? Just fly the hell out?
Just fly it to another country real quick, and then you get it back to the United States or wherever they’re going to send it. Why would they leave brand new aircraft sitting on runways? Just incredible.
Fredericks: So the question is, was it incompetence, or was it by design?
Trump: I say it was incompetence. I say it was gross incompetence. I think what happened is they just allowed the Taliban to get away with what they were doing. I had them shut out. They were totally shut out.
If you take a look at this big surge that they made, we’ll use the same word surge. They made that after I left. I dealt with Abdul. And I told Abdul, look, I don’t want to really say it again, because there’s no reason to keep saying it, because, in the meantime, they’re standing there laughing at the Americans and the American flag and other countries, too by the way.
I see they have flags of other countries. They can’t be happy with what we did. But I was very tough with him. He wasn’t doing anything. He was absolutely not doing anything. And we could have taken and there was no rush frankly.
I had a May first date, which would have been nice, but they didn’t meet conditions, and they were very strong conditions. But the biggest condition, you can’t kill Americans. And they didn’t kill an American in 18 months.
Think of that, John. And we were in great shape. We could have taken our time. It was no rush. We could have taken the equipment out. I said every nail and every bolt. I want not only to acquire every nail, every screw. I want every single thing out of there.
I will tell you. Milley told me once, sir, it’s cheaper to leave it behind than it is to take it out. I said, where do you come from? Do you mean you have a $10 million army tank and it’s cheaper to leave it behind?
I don’t care who it is, I guarantee you I can remove that army tank for a tiny, tiny fraction of what you’re talking about. It gets onto a plane anywhere you want to take it out. And he said, he did tell me that, and I never forgot it.
I said, this guy has to be stupid because he said, sir, it’s cheaper to leave it behind than it is to take it. And I said you got to be kidding. Now, if they did leave it behind, you have to blow it up. But I don’t like that. I would have taken it for a tiny fraction.
I mean, these things cost tens of millions of dollars. Those Humvees that are all armor-plated, they’re unbelievably expensive to leave them, as opposed to just sending planes and transporting them out. How could anybody make a statement that it’s cheaper to leave it?
In the meantime the Taliban has it, and it’s not going to be cheaper because they’re going to be using it against us and a lot of other very good nations and people.
Listen to the full interview here:
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