Good Fighters and Great Negotiators: Donald Trump Is Weirdly Full of Praise for the Taliban – Vanity Fair

In April 2020, as the coronavirus was engulfing the U.S., then president Donald Trump declared at his then daily coronavirus briefing, This is a very brilliant enemy. You know, its a brilliant enemy. They develop drugs like the antibiotics. You see it. Antibiotics used to solve every problem. Now one of the biggest problems the world has is the germ has gotten so brilliant that the antibiotic cant keep up with it. And theyre constantly trying to come up with a newpeople go to a hospital and they catchthey go for a heart operationthats no problem, but they end up dying from, from problems.You know the problems Im talking about. Theres a whole genius to it. The remarks were bizarre not just because, as the name suggests, the coronavirus is not a bacterial infection but a virus, and therefore immune to antibiotics, but because Trump was describing a disease that had by then killed more than 20,000 people in the U.S. in the sort of glowing terms he typically only reserved for himself. Brilliant! Genius! Sure, it was highly contagious and extremely lethal but damn if Trump didnt admire it for those very reasons because, as youd probably figured out by that point, there is something very wrong with him.

Anyway, we were reminded of the ex-presidents high regard of COVID-19 on Tuesday night when he appeared on Fox News to talk about how great the Taliban is.

Per Insider:

Former President Donald Trump praised the Taliban on Tuesday, calling the group smart and good fighters.

The Taliban, good fighters, I will tell you, good fighters. You have to give them credit for that. Theyve been fighting for a thousand years. What they do is they fight, Trump said on Fox News [Hannity] on August 17. The Taliban has circled the airport, and who knows if theyre going to treat us right? All of a sudden, theyll saywell, frankly, if they were smart, theyd reallyand they are smart. They are smart. They should let the Americans out, Trump said to Hannity.

The Taliban, of course, have not been fighting for 1,000 years, as the organization was founded in the early 1990s, though thats the least problematic thing that came out of Trumps mouth during the interview.

Composed of fighters called the mujahideen, the group took control of the capital, Kabul, in 1996, but it lost power in 2001 after American forces invaded. Trumps praise of the Taliban is alarming, considering that the group is known for its brutal, violent tactics. Just this year, the militant group beheaded an Afghan interpreter for the U.S. Army. The Taliban has also been accused of multiple bombings and assassinations. Afghan women are also fearful that they may be barred from working, stoned for breaking the rules, or even killed if the Taliban imposes its strict form of Sharia.

Elsewhere in Trumps chat with Hannity, the former president attempted to rewrite his own Afghanistan history, as he is wont to do. Claiming he never had a lot of confidence, frankly in Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, who fled the country for the UAE, Trump insisted that he believed Ghani was a total crook who he never liked.Which differs slightly from his previous comments about the guy:

And, of course, it wouldnt be a Trump hit without him going off on a bizarre tangent about how dictators the world over love him and think Joe Biden sucks:

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Surprise: Fox News has some predictably terrible medical advice for its viewers

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Good Fighters and Great Negotiators: Donald Trump Is Weirdly Full of Praise for the Taliban - Vanity Fair