In three Saturday evening tweets, Donald Trump claims that leaders of the Taliban, as well as Afghan president Ashraf Ghani, were secretly scheduled to land on U.S. soil “tonight.” Trump claimed that, “unbeknownst to almost everyone,” he had separate meetings scheduled with each at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland.
Trump then claimed that he bailed on the peace talks after the Taliban took credit for a deadly car bombing in Kabul on Thursday, which killed 12 people, including an American soldier.
Trump’s tweets come just four days before the 18th anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center, fueling speculation that he was hoping to announce some sort of peace accord on Sept. 11. A tentative plan for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan was announced on Monday, despite the protestations of President Ghani.
Trump’s allegations have yet to be confirmed by any news outlet as of this writing; but it’s been noted that a Trump 2020 rally is scheduled in North Carolina one day after negotiations were supposedly beginning.