{"id":31508,"date":"2024-08-28T18:20:00","date_gmt":"2024-08-28T23:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=31508"},"modified":"2024-08-28T20:56:25","modified_gmt":"2024-08-29T01:56:25","slug":"jd-vance-blames-harris-for-afghan-deaths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=31508","title":{"rendered":"JD Vance Blames Harris for Afghan Deaths"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Republican vice presidential nominee&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/topic\/jd-vance\"><u>JD Vance<\/u><\/a>&nbsp;has blamed Vice President&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/topic\/kamala-harris\"><u>Kamala Harris<\/u><\/a>&nbsp;for the deaths of 13 U.S. service personnel during the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal in August 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Vance&#8217;s remarks came in response to recent comments from Harris&#8217;s campaign criticizing former President&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/topic\/donald-trump\"><u>Donald Trump<\/u><\/a>&nbsp;for attending a wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery to honor the fallen soldiers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">&#8220;To have those 13 Americans lose their lives and not fire a single person is disgraceful. Kamala Harris is disgraceful,&#8221; Vance said during the rally held in Erie, Pennsylvania, in what was his first visit as the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/topic\/republican\"><u>Republican<\/u><\/a>&nbsp;vice presidential nominee to the city on the Keystone State.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Vance further accused Harris of being &#8220;asleep at the wheel&#8221; for failing to investigate the events surrounding the deadly attack at Kabul&#8217;s Hamid Karzai International Airport.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">&#8220;But she wants to yell at Donald Trump for showing up. She can go to hell,&#8221; Vance added, igniting loud applause from the audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Former President Donald Trump and his allies have repeatedly criticized Kamala Harris over Afghanistan since she became the Democratic nominee. The Trump campaign has attempted to shift focus from President&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/topic\/joe-biden\"><u>Joe Biden<\/u><\/a>&nbsp;to Harris by highlighting an April 2021&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/topic\/cnn\"><u>CNN<\/u><\/a>&nbsp;interview where she stated that she was the last person in the room when Biden decided to exit Afghanistan and expressed her comfort with the decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">At a separate event on Monday, Trump attended<a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/donald-trump-retired-veteran-reacts-arlington-national-cemetery-treason-traitor-1944681\"><u>\u2002a ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery<\/u><\/a>&nbsp;to mark the third anniversary of the attack, where he blamed Biden and Harris for the incident.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">&#8220;Caused by Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, the humiliation in Afghanistan set off the collapse of American credibility and respect all around the world,&#8221; Trump said to an audience of National Guard members and their families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Harris&#8217;s campaign has defended her role, emphasizing that the decision was necessary to end a prolonged conflict that had cost thousands of American lives. In a statement commemorating the anniversary of the Kabul attack, Harris expressed sorrow for the lives lost and reiterated that ending the war was the right choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">&#8220;As I have said, President Biden made the courageous and right decision to end America&#8217;s longest war,&#8221; Harris stated. &#8220;My prayers are with their families and loved ones. My heart breaks for their pain and their loss.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">The U.S. pullout from Afghanistan has become a central battleground for&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/topic\/republicans\"><u>Republicans<\/u><\/a>. At the Republican National Convention (RNC) in July, the Trump campaign invited the families of soldiers who died in the Kabul bombing. On stage,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/rnc-2024-gold-star-afghanistan-military-donald-trump-1926780\"><u>they harshly criticized the Biden administration<\/u><\/a>&nbsp;for its handling of the withdrawal and accused Harris of failing to hold anyone accountable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Since then, Republicans and&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/topic\/democrats\"><u>Democrats<\/u><\/a>&nbsp;have been&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/donald-trump-responsible-afghanistan-withdraw-ex-adviser-1944696\"><u>pointing fingers at each other<\/u><\/a>&nbsp;over which administration is responsible for the messy withdrawal from Afghanistan after 20 years of military involvement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">While the withdrawal was completed under Biden, the Trump administration brokered a deal with the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/topic\/taliban\"><u>Taliban<\/u><\/a>&nbsp;in 2020 to leave the country. After the majority of American forces departed under Biden, the U.S.-backed Afghan government and military quickly collapsed in the face of a Taliban assault.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/jd-vance-blames-kamala-harris-afghan-withdrawal-1945784\">newsweek<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Republican vice presidential nominee&nbsp;JD Vance&nbsp;has blamed Vice President&nbsp;Kamala Harris&nbsp;for the deaths of 13 U.S. service personnel during the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal in August 2021. Vance&#8217;s remarks came in response to recent comments from Harris&#8217;s campaign criticizing former President&nbsp;Donald Trump&nbsp;for attending a wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery to honor the fallen soldiers. &#8220;To have those [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":31509,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1251,1185,2302,29668],"class_list":["post-31508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-afghanistan","tag-deaths","tag-harris","tag-jd-vance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31508"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31508\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31510,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31508\/revisions\/31510"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}