Donald Trump says Joe Biden’s handling of Afghanistan withdrawal is America’s ‘greatest embarrassment’

Former president Donald Trump said the US has never been so humiliated as it has this week in Afghanistan, launching a scathing assessment of the man who took his job, Joe Biden.

Former US president Donald Trump has declared his successor Joe Biden’s handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan to be the greatest embarrassment in American history.

“I don’t think in all of the years our country has ever been so humiliated,” Mr Trump told Fox News.

Earlier this week Mr Biden blamed the calamitous situation in Afghanistan on a US exit deal cut by Mr Trump that had left “the Taliban in the strongest position militarily since 2001”.

Mr Trump used his Fox News appearance to hit back.

Former US president Donald Trump speaks with Fox News’s Sean Hannity. Picture: Fox News

He said his own efforts were the reason why “we lost no soldiers in the last year and a half” in Afghanistan.

While it was a “great thing” America was getting out of Afghanistan, “nobody has ever handled a withdrawal worse than Joe Biden”, Mr Trump said.

“This is the greatest embarrassment, I believe, in the history of our country.”

Scenes at the Kabul international airport this week — where desperate Afghans clung to a departing US cargo plane’s fuselage before plunging to their deaths after takeoff — were worse than in Saigon in 1975, when South Vietnamese scaled the walls of the US embassy in a bid to board evacuating helicopters.

“I looked at that big monster cargo plane … with people grabbing the side and trying to get flown out of Afghanistan because of their incredible fear – and they’re blowing off of the plane from 2000 feet up in the air, nobody has ever seen anything like that,” Mr Trump said.

“That blows the helicopters in Vietnam away. That is not even a contest.”

Desperate Afghans who clung to the side of a moving US military plane fell to their deaths after takeoff. Picture: Supplied

The scale of the situation in Afghanistan also eclipsed the Iran hostage crisis of 1979, when militants stormed the US embassy in Tehran and took seven Americans captive during Jimmy Carter’s presidency.

Mr Trump said at least 11,000 Americans — and as many as 40,000 — could become hostages in Afghanistan after Mr Biden’s withdrawal of troops before civilians.

“It is a terrible time for our country,” Mr Trump said.

“I don’t think in all of the years our country has ever been so humiliated. I don’t know what you call it — a military defeat or a psychological defeat, there has never been anything like what’s happened here: You can go back to Jimmy Carter with the hostages.”

Mr Trump said “going into the Middle East” after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks was America’s worst decision ever.

“It has turned out to be quicksand,” he said.

“We destroyed the Middle East. Do you think it’s better now than it was 20, 21 years ago? It’s much worse.

“It was a horrible decision.”