Donald Trump made another appeal to pet owners at a rally in Michigan this week, following the infamously baseless argument about immigrants eating cats and dogs made during his recent debate with Vice President Kamala Harris.
The former president appeared in Flint on Tuesday, his first rally since an apparent assassination attempt on Sunday at his golf course in Florida.
While Trump’s speech mostly tried appealing to Flint’s “Vehicle City” history, talking at length about manufacturing and tariffs, he took time to mention a claim about the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, a topic he’s revisited throughout the 2024 presidential campaign.
Recalling the resources left behind at Bagram Air Base, Trump said that as well as discarding billions in military equipment, he alleged that dogs were also abandoned.
Members of the US 159th Combat Aviation Brigade medevac crews play with Major Eden, a morale dog, while waiting for a mission at the Bagram airfield in 2014. Donald Trump said at a rally this week that dogs were left by the US military in the Afghanistan withdrawal in 2021.
BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Image
The Claim
During a speech on September 17, 2024, Donald Trump said that dogs were left behind by the U.S. military as they left Afghanistan in 2021.
“But to give up and work to give up the biggest air base, military air base in the world,” Trump said.
“And they left it in the dark of night with the lights on and they did leave the dogs behind.
“There are a lot of people. They say ‘What about the dogs?’
“They left the dogs behind. But we would have been a much different country right now.”
The Facts
While U.S. forces did not take some dogs back with them as they left Afghanistan, Trump’s claim omits important details about the types of animals that were left, who they belonged to, and efforts made since by nonprofits.
In 2021, the U.S. military denied reports that it had left military working dogs behind in Afghanistan and that photos being shared online of other dogs were misleading.
“Photos circulating online were animals under the care of the Kabul Small Animal Rescue, not dogs under the care of the U.S. military,” the department’s spokesperson told Newsweek at the time.
“Despite an ongoing complicated and dangerous retrograde mission, U.S. forces went to great lengths to assist the Kabul Small Animal Rescue as much as possible.”
Pentagon Press Secretary Patrick Ryder said at the time that the U.S. military “did not leave any dogs in cages at Hamid Karzai International Airport.”
To correct erroneous reports, the U.S. Military did not leave any dogs in cages at Hamid Karzai International Airport, including the reported military working dogs. Photos circulating online were animals under the care of the Kabul Small Animal Rescue, not dogs under our care.
— Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder (@PentagonPresSec) August 31, 2021
In a statement made to People, a Pentagon spokesperson said: “Our military working dogs were safely evacuated.”
The group American Humane who publicized the issue, speaking to FactCheck.org in 2021, that while military working dogs were evacuated contract working dogs were not. The Department of Defense said that questions about those animals had to be posed to contracting companies.
“Contract working dogs should be afforded the same rights and privileges as military working dogs,” American Humane spokesperson Laura Sheehan told FactCheck.org.
In a statement to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), a U.S. Army spokesperson also said that it went to “great lengths” to help with the evacuation of more than 150 stray Afghan dogs that could not be let onto military evacuation flights due to regulations.
When a plane to evacuate did not arrive, the spokesperson said the animals were taken to a compound “with appropriate supplies of food and water.”
“This compound was relatively self-contained and provided for adequate space and grass area,” they said.
The spokesperson said Kabul Small Animal Rescue was told the location of the animals and heard they intended to return to the airport to get dogs on the plane.
Taylor Rogers, a Republican National Committee (RNC) spokesperson, told Newsweek: “The terrible impacts of Harris-Biden’s disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal are well documented.”
Michelle Smith, executive director of nonprofit Puppy Rescue Mission, which fundraises transport for animals from conflict zones, told FactCheck.org in 2021, that while service members did give the remaining animals food and water, they were not let on the plane due to rabies regulations.
As reported by Newsweek, in February 2022, hundreds of dogs and cats that were abandoned in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of U.S. troops were flown back to North America following a large-scale rescue mission.
Global animal rescue organization SPCA International was approached by Afghanistan-based rescue, Kabul Small Animal Rescue (KSAR) for help in getting the abandoned pets out of the country.
A rescue took place on February 1 after five months of preparation and collaboration with other rescue partners. The mission was branded “Mission Possible” by the organizations involved.
Newsweek has contacted Kabul Small Animal Rescue and media representatives for the Department of Defense via email for comment.
The Ruling
Needs Context.
The Department of Defense denied that military working dogs were left behind during the U.S. withdrawal in 2021. Reports at the time alleged that contract working dogs, used by private contractors, had been left.
The U.S. Army has said it also tried to secure the welfare of Afghan strays and hand them over to an animal rescue charity in Kabul. Since the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, hundreds of cats and dogs have been brought to the U.S. through nonprofit rescue efforts.
FACT CHECK BY Newsweek’s Fact Check team
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