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Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, who is the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, is doubling down on her criticism of President Donald Trump.
As previously reported, Cheney said there is no doubt that Trump and Sec. Mike Pompeo are also responsible for what’s happening in Afghanistan.
Cheney said this “didn’t happen in a vacuum” when it comes to the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
“Look, I think absolutely President Biden bears responsibility for making this decision. But there is no question that President Trump, his administration, Secretary Pompeo, they also bear very significant responsibility for this,” she said.
She continued, “They [Trump and Pompeo] walked down this path of legitimizing the Taliban, of perpetuating this fantasy, telling the American people that the Taliban were a partner for peace. President Trump told us that the Taliban was going to fight terror. Secretary Pompeo told us that the Taliban was going to renounce al Qaeda. None of that has happened. None of it has happened.”
Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Cheney “voluntarily diverted the topic of the discussion to Trump after host Chuck Todd asked her whether ‘the Taliban is a direct threat to the United States,'” Biz Pac Review noted.
“Absolutely,” Cheney responded. “The facts make me say that. We know the Taliban has never renounced al-Qaeda. This is one of the things that was such an indefensible step by the Trump Administration…”
“When President Trump and Secretary of State [Mike] Pompeo decided that they were going to sign a surrender agreement with the Taliban,” Cheney said, immediately making it about Trump.
This hardly comes as a surprise since Cheney turned on Trump following the events of Jan. 6th and even voted to impeach Trump.
Watch the clip:
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The so-called “surrender agreement” was a negotiated contract signed in February of 2020 that stipulated that the U.S. and its NATO allies would “withdraw all troops within 14 months” (by May 1st of this year) so long as the Taliban “upheld” its part of the contract, as reported at the time by the BBC.
“We sat down and negotiated with terrorists because we completely excluded the Afghan government from those negotiations. We gave credibility to the Taliban. Secretary Pompeo told us that the Taliban was going to renounce al-Qaeda. They told us that the Taliban was going to fight terrorists,” Cheney continued.
Fact-check: FALSE.
— Advertisement — Al-Qaeda is only mentioned on page three of the contract, where it’s stipulated that the Taliban will not allow al-Qaeda members “to use the soil of Afghanistan to threaten the security of the United States and its allies”:
“They forced the Afghan national government — we did — to release 5,000 prisoners. So we completely undercut the Afghan national government, we absolutely emboldened the Taliban,” Cheney added.
“And we know now from public reporting that the moment that agreement was signed, the Taliban went to members of the Afghan National Army and said, the Americans are leaving you, you should lay down your arms when the time comes or we’ll kill you and your families. So that led directly to the catastrophe we’re seeing today.”
