Fox News Host Calls Out Trump's Secretary of State for Granting Taliban 'Legitimacy'

The Taliban has once again gained control of Afghanistan amid the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the region after 20 years of occupation in a war that's cost hundreds of thousands of lives and nearly $1 trillion.

While a Taliban resurgence was expected in the region, officials hadn't expected their forces to advance so quickly, seizing control of the presidential palace in Kabul this weekend.

The development is an unmitigated foreign policy disaster for the Biden administration, but no American President in recent history is blameless in a war whose 20 years have proven to be completely ineffective at laying the groundwork for lasting stability in the region.

Former President Donald Trump has said Biden should "resign in disgrace," but Trump was wildly praised by the GOP for his so-called peace agreement with the Taliban, even inviting the group to Camp David on the week of September 11. The Trump plan would've withdrawn 5000 troops from the region by May of 2020.

In a Fox News interview, Trump's secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, faced questions from host Chris Wallace about the Trump administration's constant outreach to the Taliban.

Watch below.

Wallace asked:

"You were the first American secretary of state to ever meet with the Taliban, and you talked about how they had agreed to join us in the fight against terrorism. ... Do you regret giving the Taliban that legitimacy? Do you regret pressing the Afghan government to release 5,000 prisoners, which they did, some of whom are now back on the battlefield fighting with the Taliban?"

Pompeo responded:

"We never trusted the Taliban. You can ask them yourselves. We made abundantly clear if they did not live up to that piece of paper, to the words that they'd put on the ground, we weren't gonna allow them to just walk away from any deal that they'd struck, we were gonna go crush them."

People weren't convinced.

Others praised Wallace for the tough question.

Biden will deliver remarks about the chaos in Afghanistan later this afternoon.