Biden 'hubris,' generals' lack of plan led to 'sloppy' Afghanistan exit, ex-Green Beret says

President Biden showed "hubris" by rejecting the Trump administration's withdrawal plan from Afghanistan, and it "gave the Taliban three months of prime fighting season" to take over the country, retired Green Beret and congressional candidate Joe Kent told the John Solomon Reports podcast on Wednesday.

Kent served in the military for over 20 years, was deployed 11 times, and lost his wife in action while she was fighting against ISIS in Syria. He is now running for a congressional seat in Washington state.

Kent criticized the Biden administration's mishandling of the Afghanistan withdrawal.

"What I think happened with Biden is he wanted to have his cake and eat it, too," said Kent. "He didn't want to give Trump the victory of following Trump's withdrawal plan in May. So he's kind of like the guy that's riding a crocodile, hoping it eats him last."

Biden knew not to trust the generals who wanted to prolong the war, but gave in to extending the withdrawal deadline so as not to follow Trump's plan, Kent believes.

"Biden wasn't having it," Kent conjectured. "And he said, 'Pull them out.' But the generals had no plan. They had no intention of having us pull out. That's why it's so sloppy right now.

"Biden, by having the hubris to say that he wouldn't do Trump's plan, he gave the Taliban three months of prime fighting season time to plan this offensive. He gave that to them, and that's on him."

Kent is running as a Republican against fellow GOP Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, who voted to impeach Trump. Kent's late wife, Shannon, was killed in Syria on Jan. 16, 2019, about a month after Trump had tried to pull U.S. troops out.

Shannon Kent had been deployed in 2012 to Afghanistan on a Navy SEAL team and later decided to become a military psychiatrist after the SEAL team commander committed suicide. The psychiatrist position would have also let her stay home with her and her husband's two kids. But because she had previously had thyroid cancer, she was not allowed to become an officer to be a military psychiatrist.

"So by Navy standards, she wasn't fit enough to sit in a classroom," Kent explained. "But she was fit enough to deploy with a special operations task force to the frontlines of Syria."

Shannon Kent tried going to legislators on Capitol Hill to get the rules changed, but to no avail.

"After she was killed, we took this to the secretary of the Navy," Kent recounted, "and said, 'You need to fix this on behalf of my wife. This is the fight that she started.' And to their credit, they did. And there's now a regulation named after her that allows enlisted people to have multiple reviews that they're putting in their packet to become an officer."

Tom Norton, a veteran of the Afghanistan War running for Congress in Michigan, also criticized Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan on the John Solomon Reports podcast, and suggested that U.S. officials "blow up" all American military equipment left behind so the Taliban can't use it or sell it to China.

"The Taliban's the one that broke the ceasefire, Mr. President," Norton said. "When one side breaks a ceasefire and you've decided to withdraw from the country, we should blow up every piece of equipment we left there ... that's how the United States saves face and says, 'Okay, that's fine. We're gone. You can have it, but you can't have our stuff.'"

"I would say, 'Mr. President, the only way you can save face now is light up every single airfield we built, every single piece of equipment we built,'" he added. "And the only airfields you leave intact are the ones that were used solely as civilian usage."