Yes, Donald Trump did invite the Taliban to Camp David while he was president

Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris met for the first time during the presidential debate in Philadelphia on Sept. 10. VERIFY analyzed claims from both Trump and Harris on debate night. 

During the debate, ABC News moderator David Muir asked Harris about the U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan and the resulting Taliban takeover of the country. Here is a portion of her response:

“I agreed with President Biden’s decision to pull out of Afghanistan. Four presidents said they would and Joe Biden did. As a result, America’s taxpayers are not paying the $300 million a day we were paying for that endless war. As of today, there is not one member of the United States military who is in active duty in a combat zone in any war zone around the world, first time in a century. Let’s understand how we got to where we are. Donald Trump, when he was president, negotiated one of the weakest deals you can imagine. He calls himself a deal maker. Even his national security adviser said it was a weak, terrible deal. Here’s how it went down. He bypassed the Afghan government. He negotiated directly with a terrorist organization called the Taliban. The negotiation involves the Taliban getting 5,000 Taliban terrorists released. Get this, and the president at the time invited the Taliban to Camp David, a place of storied significance for us as Americans. A place where we honor the importance of American diplomacy, where we invite and receive respected world leaders. And this former president, as president, invited them to Camp David.”

Camp David is a country retreat for the president and has been used by every U.S. president since Franklin D. Roosevelt, who established it in 1942. The retreat has been the site of significant diplomatic events, including peace negotiations and international summits. 

Several VERIFY readers asked us whether the claims about Trump inviting the Taliban are true. 

THE QUESTION

Did Donald Trump invite the Taliban to Camp David while he was president?

THE SOURCES

• Trump’s social media posts from Sept. 7, 2019, archived with PolitiTweet
• Remarks made by Trump on Sept. 9, 2019
• U.S. Department of State

THE ANSWER

Yes, Donald Trump invited the Taliban to Camp David while he was president.

WHAT WE FOUND

Former President Donald Trump did invite Taliban leaders to Camp David while he was president. He posted about the meeting in a thread on X, formerly Twitter, in September 2019. The meeting was canceled after a Taliban bombing killed 12 people, including a U.S. soldier, on Sept. 5, 2019. 

Here are Trump’s social media posts from Sept. 7, 2019, which were archived on PolitiTweet, which keeps an archive of public figures’ tweets. These statements were part of a thread of multiple tweets. 

“Unbeknownst to almost everyone, the major Taliban leaders and, separately, the President of Afghanistan, were going to secretly meet with me at Camp David on Sunday. They were coming to the United States tonight. Unfortunately, in order to build false leverage, they admitted to an attack in Kabul that killed one of our great great soldiers, and 11 other people. I immediately cancelled the meeting and called off peace negotiations. What kind of people would kill so many in order to seemingly strengthen their bargaining position? They didn’t, they only made it worse! If they cannot agree to a ceasefire during these very important peace talks, and would even kill 12 innocent people, then they probably don’t have the power to negotiate a meaningful agreement anyway. How many more decades are they willing to fit,” the Sept. 7 posts said.

On Sept. 9, 2019, reporters asked Trump about the canceled Taliban meeting at Camp David. Here is a transcript of the exchange:

A reporter asked, “Mr. President, why did you want to have them at Camp David? And what will you do about Afghanistan now?” 

“Well, Camp David has held meetings with a lot of people that would have been perceived as being pretty tough customers and pretty bad people. There have been plenty of so-called ‘bad people’ brought up to Camp David for meetings. And the alternative was the White House, and you wouldn’t have been happy with that either. So Camp David would have been a good place, but I don’t want to meet under circumstances where they go around and try and make themselves a little bit more important by killing a soldier; by killing, actually, also a great NATO soldier, in addition to our soldier; and also a total of 12 people. I don’t want that. But, you know, Camp David has had many meetings that, I guess, people would not have considered politically correct,” Trump responded. 

The agreement Harris referenced during the debate between the Trump administration and the Taliban was made on Feb. 29, 2020, according to documentation on the Department of State website. As part of the deal, the U.S. committed to withdrawing military forces from Afghanistan by May 2021.

While the Trump administration made the agreement with the Taliban, the Biden administration in April 2021 made the decision to move ahead with fully withdrawing troops.