Trump misleads on Afghanistan casualties
FILE - Former President Donald Trump speaks at a rally at the Delaware County Fairgrounds, April 23, 2022, in Delaware, Ohio. In more recent remarks, Trump distorted the facts around the number of U.S. service members killed in Afghanistan during his presidency. (AP Photo/Joe Maiorana, File)
CLAIM: When former President Donald Trump was in charge, 18 months went by in Afghanistan when “we didn’t lose one American soldier.”
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. There is no year-and-half time frame under Trump’s presidency alone that no combat deaths among U.S. service members were reported. That occurred during the 18 months preceding the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, which included months under the Biden administration as well.
THE FACTS: While speaking in Austin, Texas, on Saturday, Trump claimed while discussing the U.S. war in Afghanistan: “When I was in charge, in 18 months, we didn’t lose one American soldier.”
“In 18 months in Afghanistan, we lost nobody,” he later emphasized after mentioning that day’s deadly shooting in Buffalo, New York, in which a white gunman killed 10 Black people in a supermarket.
Trump didn’t specify which 18-month period he was referencing, and a spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for clarification.
During Trump’s presidency, which ran from January 20, 2017, to January 20, 2021, there were 45 combat deaths among U.S. service members reported in Afghanistan, as well as 18 “non-hostile” deaths, according to the Defense Casualty Analysis System.
There was an 18-month stretch that saw no combat, or “hostile,” deaths in Afghanistan: from early February 2020 to August 2021.
There were two combat deaths reported in early February 2020, when Trump was president, and none reported again until late August 2021, when an attack killed 13 U.S. troops amid the exit from Afghanistan, during Biden’s presidency. There were also several “non-hostile” deaths among U.S. service members in Afghanistan during that time frame, specifically in 2020.
Looking at other periods of Trump’s presidency also tells a different story than the one he offered.
During the last, full 18 months before Trump left office in January 2021 — from July 2019 to December 2020 — there were 12 combat deaths reported.
Nearly 2,500 U.S. service members died during the 20-year war.
___
This is part of AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.