Donald Trump’s interview with Tucker Carlson on Tuesday was bizarre throughout, but perhaps one of the most standout moments was the ex-president’s sudden defence of... dogs?
Trump, who has plans to run again in the 2024 US presidential race, has just been charged over hush money he gave to adult film star Stormy Daniels and has an upcoming criminal trial.
There are two other cases building against him too: that of his involvement in the January 6 Capitol riots and the attempts to overturn the 2020 election.
But, on Tuesday evening, he had something else on his mind.
Speaking about the 2021 Afghanistan evacuation, Trump told Fox News: “They left everything, they left the lights on – they left the dogs, by the way.”
Carlson, looking bewildered, asked: “They left the dogs?”
“They left the dogs,” Trump continued. “The dog-lovers, and you’ve got a lot of them, I love dogs, you love dogs, but they left the dogs.
“People said, one of the first questions I got, ‘what did they do with the dogs?’
“Mostly German shepherds. They left them.”
Curiously, Trump did not actually have a dog during his time in the White House, making him the first US President in a century not to have a canine friend with him.
Back in 2019, he claimed this was because he just didn’t have “time”.
Like the UK, the US did specifically evacuate some military dogs from Afghanistan (including German shepherds). This move was widely condemned, because it delayed the evacuation of the people on the ground who faced possible persecution from the Taliban.
Trump also used the interview to lash out at Joe Biden’s general management of the evacuation, saying: “Afghanistan, one of the worst things I’ve ever seen, the most embarrassing moment that this country has ever had frankly, not the getting out, we had to get out, it was ridiculous to be there.”
But he suggested that his administration would have “got out with strength and dignity”, and “faster than them”.