Oh my, talk about clandestine!
Our President is always up to something, but a secret meeting with the Taliban and President of Afghanistan was probably not something any of us would have ever expected.
It just goes to show you how dedicated this man is to reaching peace and thinking outside the box.
And working tirelessly.
Unfortunately, the Taliban did not have similar goals and the meeting has now been indefinitely cancelled:
President Trump is receiving incredible support right now in the Comments online:
The (failing) NY Times had more details:
President Trump said on Saturday that he had canceled a secret meeting at Camp David with Taliban leaders and the president of Afghanistan and had called off monthslong negotiations with the Afghan insurgent group that appeared to be nearing a peace agreement.
“Unbeknownst to almost everyone,” Mr. Trump wrote in a series of tweets, Taliban leaders and the Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, were headed to the United States on Saturday for what would have been a historic Sunday meeting at Camp David.
But Mr. Trump angrily said that “in order to build false leverage,” the Taliban had admitted to a suicide car bomb attack on Thursday that had killed an American soldier and 11 others in the capital of Kabul. “I immediately cancelled the meeting and called off peace negotiations,” he wrote.
“If they cannot agree to a ceasefire during these very important peace talks, and would even kill 12 innocent people, then they probably don’t have the power to negotiate a meaningful agreement anyway,” Mr. Trump wrote. “How many more decades are they willing to fight?”
Mr. Trump’s announcement was startling for multiple reasons. A surprise summit at Camp David with leaders of an insurgent group that has killed thousands of Americans since the October 2001 invasion of Afghanistan would have been a sensational diplomatic gambit, on par with Mr. Trump’s meetings with the once-reclusive North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un.
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The move also appears to scuttle — for now — his longstanding hopes to deliver on a campaign promise to withdraw American troops.
The details of the meeting and exact timeline of its scheduling and cancellation, as described by Mr. Trump, were unclear on Saturday night. On Friday, the website of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, citing an Afghan official, reported that Mr. Ghani had postponed a planned meeting in Washington.
It was also unclear whether Mr. Trump was calling a permanent halt to the peace negotiations. The president has frequently reversed himself in short order, and abruptly canceled his first summit with Mr. Kim before rescheduling it soon after.
Even more significant than the fate of the meeting is Mr. Trump’s assertion that he is calling off the peace negotiations that his special envoy for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, began last winter. They were propelled by Mr. Trump’s impatience to withdraw American troops from an 18-year conflict that he has called an aimless boondoggle. United States and foreign officials said that the talks had reached an advanced stage and, until Saturday night, that an agreement with the Pashtun insurgent group that once harbored the Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden was close at hand.
And from (the awful) CNN:
President Donald Trump said Saturday that Taliban leaders were to travel to the US for secret peace talks this weekend along with the President of Afghanistan at Camp David, but that the meeting has been canceled.
Trump tweeted that he scrapped the meeting after the Taliban took credit for an attack in Kabul, Afghanistan that killed a dozen people, including an American soldier.
"Unbeknownst to almost everyone, the major Taliban leaders and, separately, the President of Afghanistan, were going to secretly meet with me at Camp David on Sunday," Trump tweeted.
Trump claimed that before traveling to the US on Saturday evening, "Unfortunately, in order to build false leverage, they admitted to......an attack in Kabul that killed one of our great great soldiers, and 11 other people."
"I immediately cancelled the meeting and called off peace negotiations," Trump added.
The President slammed the leaders for thinking that the attacks would improve their negotiating position.
"What kind of people would kill so many in order to seemingly strengthen their bargaining position?" he tweeted. "They didn't, they........only made it worse!"
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The announcement comes as the US and the Taliban are close to finalizing a peace deal. The lead US negotiator and special envoy for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, returned to Doha, Qatar, this week to resume talks with the Taliban.
Khalilzad had told Afghanistan's TOLOnews on Monday that the US and the Taliban have reached an agreement "in principle," pending final approval by Trump.
Khalilzad said that based on the draft agreement, the US will pull troops from five bases across Afghanistan within 135 days so long as the Taliban meet conditions set in the agreement.
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