President Trump claimed on Twitter Saturday that the Taliban have “never been hit harder,” one week after he abruptly canceled peace talks with the Islamist organization.
“Killing 12 people, including one great American soldier, was not a good idea,” Trump said. “There are much better ways to set up a negotiation. The Taliban knows they made a big mistake, and they have no idea how to recover!”
The message came hours after the president announced that the son of Usama bin Laden, Hamza, had been killed in a recent counterterrorism operation in the Afghanistan/Pakistan border region. Hamza bin Laden had been a high-ranking member of Al Qaeda, the terror group his father formerly led.
Reports of Hamza’s death had surfaced in July but were not confirmed until the president’s Saturday statement.
The message about the Taliban also came one day after its negotiators landed in Moscow to meet with Russian officials.
Last Saturday, Trump announced that he had canceled meetings with Taliban and Afghan officials at Camp David following a recent attack which killed an American soldier.
