Former Pennsylvania state senator Scott Wagner is behind billboards in the Keystone State that prominently display the phrase “Making the Taliban Great Again!” alongside a graphic that looks like President Biden wielding a rocket launcher.
Wagner is a Republican who entered office on April 2, 2014 and resigned on June 4, 2018. He mounted an unsuccessful gubernatorial bid, losing to Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf during the 2018 election.
“The pull out rushed through by President Biden had made us the laughing stock of the world,” Wagner wrote in an email, according to Fox News. “The Taliban are openly stating that they ran the United States out of Afghanistan – they are now very emboldened.”
He said that the liberties “young people have experienced since we landed in their country will be taken away now that the Taliban is in control.”
“What do we say to families who lost loved ones in the Middle East – the country these people served and died for left Afghanistan with its tail between its legs,” he told the outlet. “It seems that President Biden was hell bent on rushing out of Afghanistan – his ego and lack on information is going to prove to be very bad for the United States.”
Who’s responsible for the Joe Biden Taliban billboard over I-83 in York County?
www.youtube.com
The Biden administration has been widely criticized for bungling the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan.
The Taliban swiftly swept control in the country, seizing the capital city of Kabul last month. Billions of dollars of weaponry supplied to Afghanistan by the U.S. has been seized by the Taliban. U.S. troops and other individuals were killed during a terror attack in Kabul last month. The U.S. announced the completion of its pullout even as American citizens and Afghan allies remained stranded in Afghanistan.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken testified on Monday that as of the end of last week there were still Americans in Afghanistan who wanted to get out.
“So as of the end of last week, we had about a hundred American citizens in Afghanistan who told us that they wish to leave the country. And I want to emphasize that this is a snapshot in time. It’s more accurately a moving picture, as you know, stepping back for a minute to know precisely at any given moment of time exactly how many American citizens are in any country,” Blinken said to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, according to Fox News.
“It’s something we can’t and don’t know. Americans are not required to register when they go to a foreign country or if they reside there. And so from the start of this effort, we’ve been engaged in an intense effort to identify every American citizen that we could in Afghanistan, to be in touch with them, in contact with them and to work with them if they wanted to leave,” Blinken said, according to the outlet.
A recent Quinnipiac University national poll of adults found that while 31% approve of the way the president handled withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan, a whopping 65% disapprove. And while 62% believe American troops will need to return to Afghanistan to combat terrorism, just 28% do not think so.