Former President Trump during Tuesday night’s debate recounted a threat he made to “Abdul … the head of the Taliban” as he and Vice President Harris engaged about the Biden administration’s handling of the deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.
Trump’s story came from when he was president, and he said the threat came because of the deaths of U.S. soldiers.
“I got involved. And Abdul is the head of the Taliban. He is still the head of the Taliban,” Trump said. “And I told Abdul, ‘Don’t do it anymore. You do it anymore, you’re going to have problems.’ And he said, ‘Why do you send me a picture of my house?’ I said, ‘You’re going to have to figure that out, Abdul.’ And for 18 months we had nobody killed.”
It’s not clear who Trump was referring to.
Hibatullah Akhundzada is the Taliban’s leader, having been in charge since 2016.
Trump has talked about an “Abdul” before in discussing the Taliban. Trump in the past has said that then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo negotiated with “Abdul,” which could be a reference to top Taliban policy leader Abdul Ghani Baradar.
Baradar met with Pompeo in Qatar in 2020 and was among the group’s negotiators with the Trump administration over the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.
Trump previously discussed his “rough call” with “the leader of the Taliban, Abdul,” during an interview with Fox News personality Sean Hannity in 2022.
“I said, ‘Don’t do it,’” Trump told Hannity. “It was strong. And he understood it.”
After Hannity hinted at Trump’s threat of repercussions on the call, the former president replied: “We had a strong phone call. Let’s put it that way.”
Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas) also told a similar version of the story this summer during an appearance on former ESPN host Sage Steele’s podcast.
“President Trump looked at the Taliban leader and said this ‘If you harm a hair on a single American, I’m going to kill you,’” Hunt said, noting the use of a satellite photo of the “leader of the Taliban’s home” in the threat.
Video of Hunt’s recounting of his “favorite” Trump story went viral, and Fox News host Greg Gutfeld, who is in direct contact with the former president and whose show Trump watches, named the video as the “Gutfeld!” video of the day July 3.
“Whatever you think about Trump, he knew how to motivate people, right?” Gutfeld said after airing the video of Hunt’s retelling.
Gutfeld, comedian Joe Machi, Fox News contributor George “Tyrus” Murdoch and others on the show went on to regale the story of Trump’s “jaw-dropping” show of “masculinity.”
The Trump administration did not include the alleged threat to the Taliban leader in its official communications about the deal the then-president struck in 2020 to bring troops out of Afghanistan. Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid hasn’t responded to Trump’s story on his official X social media feed.
The Associated Press has reported there was no year-and-a-half stretch during Trump’s presidency without combat deaths among U.S. service members.
There was an 18-month span in the final months of Trump’s term that stretched into the Biden administration before the Afghanistan withdrawal where no U.S. soldiers were killed.