President Trump has never confronted Vladimir Putin with intelligence indicating Russia paid the Taliban to kill U.S. troops, he told “Axios on HBO” in an interview on Tuesday.
Democrats have seized on the issue, and Trump’s reluctance to discuss it, as evidence he’s unwilling to challenge Putin even when American lives are at stake.
- Trump spoke with Putin on Thursday, and subsequently deflected a question about whether he’d raised the alleged bounty scheme, saying on Monday: “We don’t talk about what we discussed, but we had plenty of discussion.”
In Tuesday’s interview, he was definitive:
“I have never discussed it with him.”
Pressed on why he didn’t raise the matter in Thursday’s call, he said: “That was a phone call to discuss other things, and frankly that’s an issue that many people said was fake news.”
- Trump has spoken to Putin at least eight times since intelligence about the alleged Russian bounties was reportedly included in the President’s Daily Brief — his written intelligence briefing — in late February.
- Trump’s team says he was not verbally briefed on the matter before a June 26 report from the New York Times brought the controversy out into the open.
There’s no clear consensus within the intelligence community about the strength of the evidence that Russia paid the bounties — though that’s not the case when it comes to Russia’s broader support for the Taliban.
- In 2018, Gen. John Nicholson, then the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, accused Russia of providing money and arms to the group, saying, “we know that the Russians are involved.”
- Trump told “Axios on HBO” that he was not aware of Nicholson’s comments, and said evidence that Russia was aiding the Taliban “never reached my desk.”
The backstory: The New York Times reported in June that U.S. intelligence had concluded “months ago” that an infamous Russian military intelligence unit had offered payments for each U.S. or allied soldier killed.
- Those payments were funneled through middlemen and could run as high as $100,000, according to the Times.
- The White House claimed that Trump had not been briefed on the matter because the intelligence was inconclusive.
- Multiple outlets subsequently reported that the intelligence was included in the PDB, but that Trump may not have read it.
- Trump insisted in the interview that he does read the PDB — “they like to say I don’t read, I read a lot” — but stood by the claim that the matter “never reached my desk” because U.S. intelligence “didn’t think it was real.”
Suspicions of Russian support for the Taliban have swirled within the U.S. intelligence community since Barack Obama’s second term, though firm intelligence — including on any bounty scheme — didn’t come until later, Axios contributor Zach Dorfman reports.
“If it reached my desk I would have done something about it,” he said, adding: “I comprehend extraordinarily well.”
Mr. Trump has long taken pains not to personally criticize Mr. Putin, despite generally hostile relations between Washington and Moscow, and even seemed intent on downplaying evidence of broader Russian military and financial support for the Taliban.
Asked about claims to that effect by the former top U.S. general in Afghanistan, Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr., Mr. Trump dismissed the notion. “I didn’t ask Nicholson about that,” he said, before saying that the general “didn’t have great success” in his command, which ended in 2018.
Mr. Trump also suggested that Russian backing for the Taliban would be a kind of understandable payback for America’s backing of fighters opposing the Soviet occupation of that country during the 1980s.
“Well we supplied weapons when they were fighting Russia too,” Mr. Trump said.
By the way:
I don’t think I need to explain who benefits from the US withdrawing troops from Germany and NATO being damaged do I?
*I’m not against such a withdrawal but I would prefer that it be done in a thoughtful strategic way not by a compromised, corrupt imbecile with deep, serious psychological damage. I just think that’s not a good way to reorder the world.)