WHITE HOUSE 'NOT TOO CONCERNED ABOUT THE DETAILS' ON AFGHANISTAN, TRUMP'S CHIEF OF STAFF SAYS

AVA- Mulvaney, who also serves as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget and previously called Trump “a terrible human being,” appeared on CNN’s State of the Union for an interview on Sunday. During the segment, the Trump administration official was asked about the president’s remarks last week, in which he said that the now defunct Soviet Union “was right” to invade Afghanistan.
“I think those are comments the president made born out of frustration from where we are and I’m not too concerned about the details,” Mulvaney responded.
Prior to Mulvaney’s response, host Jake Tapper asked about information that the president receives, suggesting that he may be getting some that is incorrect. He pointed out that Trump’s Afghanistan comments were verifiably inaccurate.
“I have seen every single piece of information that goes onto the Resolute Desk,” Mulvaney said, dismissing Tapper’s suggestion. “I have seen every single piece of information that goes to the [president’s] residency at night, and I have not seen anything objectionable,” he insisted.
Last Wednesday, Trump criticized the United States’ longest war, which is ongoing in Afghanistan, and made controversial statements about the Soviet Union’s actions in the country between 1979 and 1989. “Russia used to be the Soviet Union. Afghanistan made it Russia because they went bankrupt fighting in Afghanistan," the president said. "The reason Russia was in Afghanistan was because terrorists were going into Russia. They were right to be there,” he added.
Trump also argued that Russia and other regional nations, such as India and Pakistan, should take on a more active role in resolving the ongoing conflict between the Islamist extremist group, the Taliban, and the Afghan government.
Afghanistan’s Foreign Minister Salahuddin Rabbani pushed back, saying Trump’s retelling of the conflict “defies historical facts.”
“Soviet occupation was a grave violation of Afghanistan’s territorial integrity & nat’l sovereignty [sic],” he wrote on Twitter. “Invasion was condemned by UN&int. comm. Heroic resistance & sacrifice of millions of Afghans 4 freed’m & independence ingrained n history [sic],” he added. The country’s foreign ministry also sent an official inquiry to Washington to ask for clarification.
Omar Samad, a former Afghan diplomat who is now a senior fellow at the Washington-based Atlantic Council, also criticized Trump’s version of events. “POTUS needs advisors who can brief him on why USSR went into Afghanistan in 1979 (after a bloody communist/military coup in 1978 followed by indiscriminate purges was facing widespread popular resistance) [sic],” Samad wrote in a Twitter post. “The rest is history. Wrong narratives can result in bad policy.”
The Wall Street Journal ’s editorial board published an op-ed on Thursday slamming Trump as well. Titled “Trump’s Cracked Afghan History,” the article said: “We cannot recall a more absurd misstatement of history by an American President. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan with three divisions in December 1979 to prop up a fellow communist government.”