Former President Donald Trump delivered a rambling anecdote about a conversation with the leader of the Taliban, maybe, during an interview this week that baffled CNN analyst Chris Cillizza.

Trump gave a lengthy and rather under-the-radar interview to Hugh Hewitt this week that featured some jaw-dropping statements about Osama bin Laden, but Cillizza flagged another portion of the interview in which Trump described a call with Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar.

Cillizza wrote a detailed and baffled analysis of Trump’s lengthy answer to Hewitt’s question, including the assertion that Trump appeared not to know the Taliban leader’s name, and at one point appearing unsure of whether Baradar was, indeed, the leader of the Taliban at the time.

“I spoke to, and sort of the known head, but nobody was sure, but now I’m sure, and I was sure then when I was speaking to him. And I knew as soon as I spoke to him. And even the introduction, I say hello, and he screamed something very tough.”

If I am reading this right, Trump wasn’t sure that Baradar was the head of the Taliban when the conversation first started but he figured it out once Baradar “screamed something very tough.”

Here’s Hewitt’s transcript of the entire exchange:

HH: I do. What did you communicate to Baradar, Mullah Baradar, Abdul Baradar who you talked to when you spoke to him? What did you tell him?

DJT: So I set up a conversation with him, and people said oh, you shouldn’t be talking. Well, I set up a conversation with Kim Jong Un of North Korea. We didn’t have a nuclear war. Had I not, then Obama would have been right. We would have had a nuclear war. President Obama said to me we’re going to have a nuclear war with North Korea. I said have you ever spoken to him. He said no. And I said don’t you think that might be a good idea. But anyway, I know he wanted to speak to him, but he never got to speak to him, and I think the other side didn’t want to talk to Obama. So what happened is I spoke to the head of the, the known head, because it’s…

HH: Yeah, Baradar, right? Baradar.

DJT: Yeah, but I spoke to, and sort of the known head, but nobody was sure, but now I’m sure, and I was sure then when I was speaking to him. And I knew as soon as I spoke to him. And even the introduction, I say hello, and he screamed something very tough. And I then started with him. I said listen, before we start the longtime conversation and conversations that we’re going to have, I have to say one thing, and I’ll never have to say it again to you. And here’s what I say. If you do anything bad to the United States of America, if you do anything bad to any of our civilians, to any American citizen, or if you do anything out of the normal, you know, they’ve been fighting for a 1,000 years, but out of the normal, because you’ve had your wars, and if you do anything out of the normal, but anything bad to America or any American citizens, I will hit you harder than anybody has ever been hit in world history. You will be hit harder than any country and any person has ever been hit in world history. And we will start with the exact location and the exact town, and it’s right here. And I believe I repeated the name of his town. That will be the first place that we start. And I won’t be able to speak to you anymore after that, and isn’t that a very sad thing? But that is the story. And then he asked me one question, and I’d rather not repeat that question, because it’s a very scary question. But he asked me one question, and I gave him the answer yes. And then after it was all done, I said okay, now I’ve said what I’m going to say. Let’s have a conversation. And I said we’re going to be leaving after 21 years. And when we leave, you’re going to leave us alone, and we’re going to leave with great dignity and great honor. And we are going to take care of this situation. We’re going to take our time. We had a date of May 1st, but they missed a couple of conditions. We had some very strong conditions, Hugh. But they missed a couple of conditions. I wanted to be out by May 1st. I had spoken to him quite a bit before May 1st, but we had a condition of May 1st. But they missed conditions, and so therefore, I bombed and we hit them very hard. And then we said we will agree to those conditions. I said no, you’ve already agreed to them. Don’t play games. We had them so good. They weren’t in Kabul. You take a look at when they started taking over Afghanistan. It’s when I left. When I left, that’s when it started, they started going wild, because they were dealing with another president. And I never realized, and of course I realized the importance and power of the presidency, but I never realized how important the office of the president is until this happened, because when I watched what happened over the last week and a half with some horrible, stupid decisions that were made, number one being allowing our military to leave before the civilians and before we get all of our equipment back, $83 billion dollars. And not, nobody can even comprehend that much equipment. Thousands of vehicles, thousands, you saw the list of vehicles.

HH: Yes.

DJT: He could have the used, he could have the greatest car sale and truck sale in the history of the world. And these are all armor-plated, these are millions and millions of dollars each, each, for each vehicle. It cost millions of dollars, and that’s where we were. And we were getting ready to leave, and then the election was rigged. And shockingly, I lost. Even though I got 12 million more votes than I got the first time, even though I ran a better campaign than I ran the first time, the election was lost. The ballots were rigged. They used COVID in order to cheat, because they cheat fantastically. If they could fight wars like they cheat an election, we would have had that war one in one day. But…

Watch above via Hugh Hewitt.

The post ‘Nobody Was Sure, But Now I’m Sure, And I Was Sure Then’: Trump’s Bizarre Story About Taliban Leader Baffles CNN Analyst first appeared on Mediaite.

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