Yahoo News Trump says New Yorkers can’t have guns but Taliban can have 27 each in error-strewn rant on Fox News
Donald Trump returned to Fox News on Wednesday night to spew out a few familiar false claims.
Mr Trump had the fact-checkers working late as he joined Greg Gutfield’s 11pm show Gutfield! on Wednesday to attack President Joe Biden’s handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal.
The former commander-in-chief claimed he would have brought US forces out slowly over a period of years, overlooking the fact that he had imposed a deadline of 1 May to withdraw all US forces from the country.
In the chaotic final days of his presidency, he even tried to bring out the troops before Joe Biden’s inauguration in an off-the-books mission, according to Axios.
Ignoring those details, Mr Trump told the Fox host: “We could have taken a year, two years, but to leave $85bn worth of equipment, for them to fly around in Apache helicopters, this is the greatest war machine outside of the submarine, this is the greatest war machine there is.”
Mr Trump has made reference to leaving $85bn in Afghanistan in several recent interviews, leading the Washington Post to pen a comprehensive debunking of the claim.
It reported that while Mr Trump had rounded up the figure it was “not invented out of whole cloth”.
“But it reflects all the money spent to train, equip and house the Afghan military and police – so weapons are just a part of that. At this point, no one really knows the value of the equipment that was seized by the Taliban.”
After Mr Trump’s comments, Mr Gutfield joked that while the Taliban have Apache helicopters, he “can’t even get a gun in New York”.
“If I’d joined the Taliban I could have had a helicopter.”
Mr Trump agreed: "We can’t have guns, but the Taliban, they can have 27 each.”
Mr Trump may have momentarily forgotten about the Second Amendment, which enshrines Americans rights to “bear arms” under the US Constitution.
Even in states with stricter gun ownership law such as New York, law-abiding citizens are not restricted from the right to buy, sell, keep or use guns.
The NY Safe Act does prevent “criminals and the dangerously mentally ill” from buying weapons, and only bans the most dangerous assault weapons.
Mr Trump aired a few more of his favourite lines, including that he rebuilt the military, wiped out “the biggest people”, a reference to the 2019 killing of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and was treated worse than any other President.
His aides have claimed that the 75-year-old is ramping up media appearances in preparation for another run at the presidency in 2024.
During the interview, Mr Gutfield also revealed that he had lost friends due to his support for Mr Trump.
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