August 16, 2021

Trump Slams Biden for Doing What Trump Bragged About

Brian Cahn/ZUMA

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As uncertainty consumes Afghanistan, Donald Trump is blaming Joe Biden for doing what Trump said he did.

“He ran out of Afghanistan instead of following the plan our Administration left for him,” the former president wrote in a statement Saturday. Then, barely 25 hours later, another statement from Trump: “Never would have happened if I were President!”

While we’ll never know exactly what a Trump administration-led withdrawal from Afghanistan will look like, we can make some educated guesses based on his words from barely a month ago. “I started the process, all the troops are coming home,” he told supporters at a rally in Wellington, Ohio in late June. “What are we going to say? We’ll stay for another 21 years, then we’ll stay for another 50. The whole thing is ridiculous.” And few months before that, in April of this year, Trump was clear about where he stood: “We can and should get out earlier…Getting out of Afghanistan is a wonderful and positive thing to do. I planned to withdraw on May 1st.” Trump’s former National Security Advisor even agrees, saying the former president “would’ve done essentially the same thing” as Biden.

So let me get this straight, the only president to be impeached twice is blaming Biden for a mess that Trump took credit for in front of supporters?

The rest of the Republican party seems to realize this too, seeing as the RNC wiped clean their webpage laying out Trump’s negotiations and work with the Taliban during his presidency.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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