Former US President Donald Trump called US army general Mark Milley “a f*cking idiot” at an event on Saturday. Trump’s comment against the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley was made during a speech given at the Mar-a-Lago event organized by the conservative organization Turning Point Action, a C4 affiliate of Turning Point USA.
Trump discussed the decision of the US army to leave behind expensive war equipment including helicopters in Afghanistan and said, “I said, the moment we get out, I want every nut, every bolt, every screw… we’re taking everything, we’re taking down the tents”. After that he added, “They left all the tents. They left everything. Couldn’t they have flown in a couple of hundred pilots and flown the planes back?”.
Mocking the US top general, Donald Trump said, “I’ll never forget Milley saying to me, ‘Sir, sir. It’s cheaper to leave the equipment than to bring it’.
Trump then added that he asked Milley, “I said ‘really?’
“You’ve got a $50m dollar aeroplane. You’ve got a $29m gorgeous helicopter. We had every type of helicopter. Many of them brand new. Literally out of the box. You think it’s cheaper to leave it there so they can have it, than it is to fill it up with a half tank of gas and fly it into Pakistan or fly it back to our country?”
To this, Milley replied ‘Yes sir. We think it’s cheaper Sir,’ as said by Trump, and added that at that point he realized that Milley was “a f*cking idiot”.
“That’s when I realised he was a f***ing idiot,” he said. This comment by Trump elicited laughter and cheers from the audience.
Notably, Trump had also referred to Milley as “a complete nut job” and “dumbass” in the past and accused him of treason. He said that the US General’s greatest fear was “upsetting the woke mob”.
Notably, Donald Trump had recently hinted at running again for the presidency in 2024 and told GB News host Nigel Farage that if a person loved his country, then he got no choice. He also said, “I think we’re going to have a very big 2022 and an even bigger 2024.”
Amid the chaotic withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan after and before the Taliban took over the country in Afghanistan, military equipment worth billions were left behind the various army and airforce bases in the country. The US military left behind several helicopters, thousands of armoured vehicles, lakhs of assault rifles and other guns, tonnes of ammunition, artillery and mortar systems, sophisticated defensive systems etc. While US officials had claimed that aircraft left behind were disabled, later videos had emerged showing the Taliban flying an American Black Hawk helicopter.
While some of the equipment left behind belonged to the US forces, many others belonged to Afghan forces given by the USA.
