In his third campaign for the nation’s top office, former President Donald Trump’s closing messages have run the gamut, touching on the economy, immigration, the military, crime, taxes and more. In lengthy speeches, he rattles off a stream of claims. We reviewed Trump’s remarks from Oct. 18 through Oct. 22.
The Republican presidential front-runner repeated many claims he has made before.
The U.S. spent more than $849 billion in the 20-year war in Afghanistan and has spent about $113 billion to support Ukraine since Russia invaded in 2022. But a video on social media falsely claims that the aid for Ukraine is “double the U.S. expenditure for its own war in Afghanistan.”
Rep. Mike Rogers, the ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, said congressional testimony this week showed that President Joe Biden ignored the advice of top generals about what to do in Afghanistan while former President Donald Trump “did listen to it.” That’s not entirely accurate.
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Gen. Mark Milley and Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command, contradicted President Joe Biden’s claim last month that top military advisers didn’t recommend keeping a residual force in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan has implemented a COVID-19 vaccination program and, although administration of vaccines has slowed due to internal armed conflicts, the program is still underway. But some prominent conservative purveyors of misinformation in the U.S. have made false claims about vaccination efforts and the impact of the pandemic in Afghanistan.
A spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has conceded that the New York Democrat falsely claimed that “all” Americans who wanted to leave Afghanistan “have come out.” Government officials say that fewer than 100 U.S. citizens, and an unknown number of U.S. legal permanent residents, who want to leave Afghanistan are still in the country.
The Taliban seized an arsenal of U.S.-made military equipment when it overran the Afghan army, but not nearly as much as numerous Republicans have claimed.
A viral meme falsely claims that former President Donald Trump suggested that the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan was an orchestrated distraction by Democrats. A spokesperson for Trump has denied he made that remark. A very similar statement, not attributed to the former president, previously went viral on Facebook.
Afghan journalists report that a video of a person suspended from a helicopter shows an operation in which the person was trying to change a flag. But critics of President Joe Biden have used the footage to claim the Taliban used U.S. equipment for a “hanging.” One person who shared the claim, Sen. Ted Cruz, later deleted his tweet, saying it “may be inaccurate.”