Trump inflated the cost for military equipment that was left in Afghanistan

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On September 28, 2021 Donald Trump claimed:

 

“The horrible ‘withdrawal’ was caused, in particular, because the Military was taken out before American citizens and $85 Billion worth of the highest-grade Military equipment anywhere in the world.”

 

But fact checking articles found he was exaggerating as usual – by perhaps a factor of three or more. Our total spending for the Afghanistan Security Forces Fund (ASFF) was about $85 million. On August 31, 2021 there is an article by Ali Swenson at AP titled FACT FOCUS: Trump, others wrong on US gear left with Taliban. Another on September 3, 2021 by Robert Farley at FactCheck.org is titled Republicans inflate cost of Taliban-seized U.S. military equipment. On October 12, 2021 there is still another article by Jacob Jarvis at Newsweek titled Fact Check: Donald Trump’s claim U.S. left $85 billion of equipment with Taliban. Jarvis reported:

“The SIGAR report says that between 2005 and the third quarter of 2021, $18.56 billion from the ASFF was spent on ‘equipment and transportation.’….A Government Accountability Office report from 2017 said around 29 percent of the funds allocated to the ASFF, since it was set up in 2005, were spent on equipment and transportation between 2005 and 2016.”

On September 1, 2020 I blogged about how Donald J. Trump lies almost once each hour of every day.