How did Trump’s statements on Afghanistan compare with Biden’s 2021 withdrawal and subsequent terrorist incidents?
Executive summary
Donald Trump’s statements and actions before and after the U.S. exit from Afghanistan emphasized a firm deadline and blamed Biden for chaotic consequences; official reviews and reporting, however, say Trump’s 2020 Doha deal set the May 2021 withdrawal timetable and that Biden inherited constrained options and a smaller force footprint (2,500 U.S. troops) when he took office [1] [2]. Reporting and reviews disagree over responsibility for the chaotic execution and subsequent security fallout: the White House review largely blames Trump’s deal and drawdowns, while critics and congressional Republicans have faulted Biden’s handling of the final withdrawal and the airport evacuation [2] [3] [4].
1. Trump’s public posture: deadlines, deals and blame
Trump negotiated the February 2020 Doha agreement with the Taliban that set a date-certain withdrawal (May 1, 2021) and engineered large U.S. troop drawdowns from roughly 13,000 to about 2,500 before leaving office; critics and later White House reviewers say his team left “no plans for how to conduct the final withdrawal or to evacuate Americans or Afghan allies” [1] [5]. Trump later continued to publicly emphasize the value of getting U.S. forces out and, in subsequent years, has pointed to the evacuation chaos and security incidents to argue his approach was right or to shift responsibility onto successors [5] [6].
2. Biden’s decision-making: inheritances and execution
When President Biden assumed office, he faced the timeline embedded in the Doha deal and a U.S. force presence at its lowest point since 2001—about 2,500 troops—according to a White House summary of after-action reviews, which concluded Biden was “severely constrained” by choices made under Trump [2] [7]. Biden announced a withdrawal plan that began on May 1 and completed by September 2021; defenders point to the inherited deadline and force posture as key limits on his options, while critics note operational errors at the endgame—particularly the chaotic Kabul airport evacuation [3] [4].
3. After-action reviews: where analysts assign blame
A multi-department White House summary and related reporting placed much of the blame for the chaotic aspects of the 2021 exit on decisions made by the Trump Administration—chiefly the Doha agreement’s timetable, prisoner releases, and the absence of a handover plan—which left the Taliban stronger and the U.S. with fewer on-the-ground options [2] [5]. Other investigators and some members of Congress have criticized Biden’s execution and tactical choices during the withdrawal even while acknowledging the difficult circumstances he inherited [4] [8].
4. Terrorist incidents and security consequences: what the record shows
Reporting of the period highlights alarm about threats during and after the withdrawal, including a suicide bombing at Kabul’s airport that killed 13 U.S. service members and many Afghans—an outcome cited by critics of the evacuation’s conduct [2]. Longer-term security impacts and the presence of extremist actors inside the Taliban’s ranks were noted as part of the context that both administrations confronted, with reviews emphasizing that the Taliban were strongest since 2001 by the time Biden took office [5] [2].
5. Political framing in later incidents: immigration, vetting and partisan claims
In later episodes, including a 2025 attack on U.S. National Guard members, President Trump and some officials have asserted the suspect arrived under Biden-era evacuation or refugee programs and called for re-examining Afghan arrivals—claims that media reporting and official statements tie to Operation Allies Welcome and admissions in 2021 [9] [6] [10]. Available sources do not mention independent confirmation in this set that the broader refugee or SIV processes directly caused the 2021 withdrawal’s operational failures; they do show the political use of immigration vetting as a lever to assign blame after subsequent incidents [9] [11].
6. Competing narratives and the evidence each side uses
Supporters of the White House review rely on documentation that the Trump Doha deal and pre-transition drawdowns limited the next administration’s options, citing troop levels and the absence of withdrawal/evacuation plans [2] [5]. Opponents and some congressional critics point to the visible collapse of the Afghan government, chaotic airport scenes, and the Kabul suicide bombing as evidence that Biden’s operational choices were flawed [3] [4]. Both narratives draw on overlapping facts—troop counts, the Doha timeline, and the evacuation outcomes—but assign different causal weight to those facts [2] [3].
7. What remains unsettled or not covered here
Available sources do not mention full independent adjudication of whether alternative approaches (e.g., keeping more troops longer) would have prevented the collapse or the specific later criminal acts; detailed counterfactuals are therefore outside the scope of the cited reporting (not found in current reporting). Congressional hearings, inspector-general reports and additional classified material informed the debate, and those documents are cited by the summaries above but are not fully reproduced in the sources provided [4] [7].
Bottom line: factual records in official reviews show Trump’s 2020 deal set firm withdrawal deadlines and reduced force levels, while Biden’s administration executed the final pullout under those inherited constraints; reviewers differ sharply over whether the principal responsibility for the chaotic outcomes and later security incidents lies with Trump’s deal and drawdowns or with Biden’s execution, and both sides have continued to use subsequent incidents to press their political claims [2] [5] [4].