President Trump Seeks the Return of Military Equipment from the Taliban
"When I see that, I get angry."
President Trump speaking at CPAC on February 22, 2025 (screenshot from his video here)
On February 22, 2025, President Donald Trump spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). He said that he gets angry when he sees that the Taliban use the U.S. military equipment (which the United States provided to Afghanistan’s National Defense and Security Forces during its military presence in the country) in their military parade every year. He reiterated that he would leverage the aid money the United States gives to Afghanistan to retrieve the equipment. Below is a transcript of his remarks on this (which can be watched here from 58:17 to 1:00:04):
We have the great, you know— I rebuilt our entire military in the first term. We left a lot of it, although a lot of it, but very small, relatively, in Afghanistan. The Taliban has it. You know, they have a parade every year where they take our military vehicles and run them up some little street, and like it’s their form of a military parade, and it makes me angry when I see that. Angry. When I see that, I get angry.
You know, we give them — I don’t think anyone knows this — we give Afghanistan about two or two and a half billion dollars a year —you know that? — for aid, aid. We need aid ourselves.
And I’m going to go back — and told them yesterday—, I want to look at it, but if we’re going to give them money, it’s okay. But I want them to give us back our military equipment that they have. They’re selling it.
Dough, would you take that, please? All right. Write something up. Now, I want them to give back, if we’re going to give them that kind of money, let them give back the military equipment, which they have with, they have tanks and trucks and guns and goggles. They have goggles. They have night goggles — better than we have — brand new, right out of the box. It’s unbelievable. So I want to do that, and I want the — if we’re going to pay them, I want to get that equipment back, okay? Dough can do it. He’s one of the guys, he is the business guy.
They hear me sitting here saying, ‘How the hell did this ever happen?’ Right? Can you believe it?
We gave them billions of dollars and we gave them our military equipment. Just tremendous numbers of billions of dollars’ worth of—billions and billions.