Donald Trump has a bad habit of making up history to fit his world view. Such was the case Wednesday when he argued the Soviet Union had the “right” to invade another country. In response, the Trump-friendly Wall Street Journal condemned him for his “mockery” of history.
The editorial ripped into Trump for comments he made about the Soviet Union’s decade long war in Afghanistan, blasting his “reprehensible” recollection of the conflict and his “slander” of U.S. allies.
It was yet another example of Trump coming to Russia’s defense, even attempting to rewrite common facts from 40 years ago.
“Russia used to be the Soviet Union,” said Trump as he began a head-scratching aside that is historically inaccurate. “Afghanistan made it Russia because they went bankrupt fighting in Afghanistan. So you take a look at other countries. Pakistan is there. They should be fighting. But Russia should be fighting. The reason Russia was in, in Afghanistan was because terrorists were going into Russia. They were right to be there. The problem is it was a tough fight. And literally they went bankrupt. They went into being called Russia again as opposed to the Soviet Union.”
The Wall Street Journal editorial board reacted strongly to Trump’s comments in the op-ed: “Right to be there? We cannot recall a more absurd misstatement of history by an American President. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan with three divisions in December 1979 to prop up a fellow communist government.”
The editorial referred to comments made by Trump during a meandering 90-minute meeting of his Cabinet, where Trump belittled the role of U.S. allies in the Middle East, accusing them of sending minimal resources to back up U.S. troops in comparison with the American presence there.
“This mockery is a slander against every ally that has supported the U.S. effort in Afghanistan with troops who fought and often died,” the Journal’s editorial said, citing the more than 450 British soldiers who have been killed there.
Just as “reprehensible,” the Journal’s editorial board noted, “was Mr. Trump’s utterly false narrative of the Soviet Union’s involvement” in Afghanistan.
In Wednesday’s meeting, Trump made the bizarre claim that in 1979, “the reason Russia was in Afghanistan was because terrorists were going into Russia,” positing that the Soviet Union’s involvement in Afghanistan was a major reason for its collapse.
Trump’s retelling of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan has been strongly disputed by historians, who say the invasion was an attempt to prop up the communist regime and compete with the U.S. in the region.
But the Journal’s editorial board was especially peeved by Trump’s assertion that Russia was “right to be there” in Afghanistan, a statement that breaks with the long-standing U.S. government view of the Soviet invasion.
While the Soviet economy did ultimately collapse, it did not go bankrupt, contrary to Trump’s claim.
Additionally, that collapse was not solely caused by the invasion into Afghanistan but rather a myriad of factors, including systemic issues within the Soviet Union’s communist economy.
The Journal, which is owned by Trump ally Rupert Murdoch, has been occasionally critical of Trump for his remarks in the past.
But the right-leaning editorial board has rarely taken such eviscerating shots at the president, whose “cracked history” they wrote “can’t alter that reality” of the Soviet war in Afghanistan.