GOP presidential nominee former President Trump on Monday promised that if he were to retake the Oval Office he would demand on Day 1 the resignation of “every single official” responsible for the “Afghanistan calamity.”
“The voters are going to fire Kamala and Joe on Nov. 5, we hope, and when I take office I will ask for the resignation of every single official. We’ll get the resignations of every single senior official who touched the Afghanistan calamity to be on my desk at noon on Inauguration Day,” Trump said, speaking to a crowd at the National Guard Association in Detroit.
“You know, you have to fire people,” Trump said. “We never fire anybody. You got to fire them, like on ‘The Apprentice.’ You’re fired. You did a lousy job,” he continued, paying homage to his reality TV series.
“You did a terrible, terrible disservice to our country. You get fired when that happens. Nobody got fired,” Trump said of the 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal. “Nobody ever gets fired in this administration. It’s amazing, all the bad things that have happened. Nobody ever gets fired.”
Former President Trump stands alongside Bill Barnett, whose grandson, Staff Sgt. Darin Taylor Hoover, died in the Abbey Gate bombing in Kabul, during a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery on Aug. 26, 2024, in Arlington, Virginia. (Getty Images )
Monday marks three years since the Aug. 26, 2021, suicide bombing at Hamid Karzai International Airport that killed 13 American service members and more than 100 Afghans. Islamic State terrorists claimed responsibility for the attack.
Roughly four months before the tragic terror attack, Vice President Kamala Harris talked about her role during a CNN interview in which she confirmed she was the last person in the room before Biden made the deadly decision to pull U.S. troops out of Afghanistan. That video is making the rounds on social media three years later.
CNN anchor Dana Bash asked, “Afghanistan, were you the last person in the room?”
“Yes,” Harris responded.
“And you feel comfortable?” Bash followed up, to which Harris responded, “I do.”
HARRIS’ ROLE IN AFGHANISTAN WITHDRAWAL A MYSTERY DESPITE BEING ‘LAST PERSON IN THE ROOM’ WITH BIDEN
Pallbearers carry one of the 13 slain service members from the Abbey Gate attack at Kabul airport in April 2021. (Stephen Lam/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)
Last month, President Biden faced criticism from Gold Star families after falsely claiming during the CNN Presidential Debate that he’s the “only president this century, this decade, that doesn’t have any troops dying anywhere in the world.”
Darin Hoover, Gold Star father of Marine Staff Sgt. Darin Taylor Hoover, who was one of those 13 American service members killed in Kabul, had a strong reaction to Biden’s debate claims.
Former President Trump on Monday promised that if he retakes the Oval Office he would demand on Day 1 the resignation of “every single official” responsible for the “Afghanistan calamity.” (Getty Images)
“You know, the stumbling, bumbling buffoon that we have in the White House had the audacity to say that, under his watch, that no military members have died,” Hoover said in an interview with Fox News Digital in June.
The Gold Star dad added, “The rage, the absolute disgust that I got from hearing him say that. I started yelling back at the TV just out of frustration. He’s never acknowledged, not one time, any of our kids. He’s never said their names. Even to this day, I doubt very seriously that he even knows their names.”
Hoover said the Biden administration sent the 13 Afghanistan Gold Star families letters a year after the attack.
HARRIS LEAVES OUT DEADLY BOTCHED AFGHANISTAN WITHDRAWAL IN SOARING PRO-MILITARY DNC SPEECH
U.S. troops stand guard behind concertina wire on a roadside near the airport in Kabul on Aug. 20, 2021. (Wakil Kohsar/AFP via Getty Images)
“All the 13 families get a canned letter. It said the same exact same thing. And it looked like it was a photocopy of all of that. It was basically, we’re sorry that your service member had died, and that’s been it. We’ve had absolutely nothing before, nothing since,” Hoover added.
Responding to Hoover’s criticism, a White House spokesperson told Fox News Digital in June that the president “cares deeply about our service members, their families, and the immense sacrifices they have made.”
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“As he said then and continues to believe now: Our country owes them a great deal of gratitude and a debt that we can never repay, and we will continue to honor their ultimate sacrifice,” the spokesperson added.
Fox News Digital’s Jasmine Baehr and Brian Flood contributed to this report.