A web page on the Republican National Committee’s (RNC) site that praised former U.S. President Donald Trump’s peace deal with the Taliban has disappeared following the toppling of the Afghan government over the weekend.
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The page, which was first posted on the RNC’s website during the 2020 presidential election, hailed Trump’s “historic peace agreement with the Taliban,” as well as the normalization of relations between Serbia and Kosovo.
However, on Monday, the Independent reported the page was returning a 404 error and could only be viewed on internet archive sites — the day after Afghanistan’s president fled the country to “avoid bloodshed,” as the Taliban entered the country’s capital Kabul.
“The Trump Administration signed a preliminary peace agreement with the Taliban that sets the stage to end America’s longest war,” said the post, which was published on Sept. 15, 2020.
“The deal has been called the ‘ best chance to end this conflict ,’ a ‘ decisive move ’ towards peace, and ‘ the best path ’ for the United States,” it continued.
The web page’s disappearance was highlighted in an Insider article, which reported that the page referred to a February 2020 conditional peace deal between the former U.S. president and the Taliban. It committed America to cutting the number of its troops in Afghanistan as long as the Taliban didn’t provide support to terrorist groups.
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The page also went on to say that Trump’s election rival, and the current president, Joe Biden, had a “history of pushing for endless wars” — listing the number of times he had called for more troops to be deployed in Afghanistan.
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While the RNC did not respond to initial requests for comment from the Independent, its Deputy Chief of Staff later pushed back against the claim that the organization had removed the web page following the events in Afghanistan over the weekend.
“This is so dishonest. We launched a new website last week… some of the old posts haven’t been carried over yet. Go look,” wrote Deputy Chief of Staff Mike Reed in a tweet. “But good try attempting to divert attention from the folks actually in charge of this disaster.”
RNC officials also told The Hill that the process of transferring older posts to the new website is expected to be completed before the end of this year.
According to Insider , three former U.S. Presidents — George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Trump — all made claims that the country was close to leaving Afghanistan but, in April, Biden followed through on his campaign promise to do so, announcing that U.S. troops would be withdrawing.
As the Taliban overtook swaths of Afghan territory, just weeks after the U.S. withdrew most of its forces in early July, both Trump and Biden have blamed each other for the turmoil in Afghanistan.
When the Taliban entered Kabul over the weekend, both the U.S. and Canada shuttered their embassies in the country’s capital. Since then, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said that Canada would not recognize the Taliban as the official Afghan government.
