Trump wants to pull all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan by 2020 election, officials say

The president threatened to shut down the U.S. embassy in Kabul last December, complaining to aides that it is too large and expensive, officials said.

Aug. 2, 2019, 5:05 PM EDT / Updated Aug. 2, 2019, 6:13 PM EDT
By Courtney Kube and Carol E. Lee

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump has told his advisers that he wants to pull all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan by the November 2020 presidential election, according to five current and former administration and military officials.

The president's advisers are now scrambling to meet his election-year deadline, which has exacerbated tensions between officials at the Pentagon and the State Department over the timing of withdrawal and whether it should be completed, the officials said.

"It's tense," said one former official briefed on the debate.

Last December Trump threatened not only to immediately withdraw all troops from Afghanistan but also to shut down the U.S. embassy in Kabul, complaining to aides that it is too large and expensive, according to officials. The president's threat to close the U.S. embassy — which has not been previously reported — so alarmed administration and military officials that they quickly offered him a plan to move up the timing of efforts to scale back the size of the embassy staff, officials said.

"He was fed up with hearing that the U.S. was not winning there," one former U.S. defense official said. "It was no secret he wanted out, but deciding to pull out of the embassy, too, was a shock."

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