The US president and the prime minister of Pakistan had a heated exchange on Twitter amid news that the US would be reducing its financial support to Pakistan, because the latter didn't "give anything to the US in return" and had allegedly failed to destroy terrorist safe havens on its soil.
Pakistani PM Imran Khan blasted Trump, saying that he needs to learn facts such as that no Pakistanis were involved in the 9/11 terrorist attack, but that the country had still participated in the US' War on Terror and suffered some 75,000 casualties. Khan also added that the war cost the state's economy some $123 billion, while the US only donated a mere $20 billion in return. The Pakistani politician also reminded Trump that his country still provides lines of both ground and air communication for NATO forces.
Instead of making Pakistan a scapegoat for their failures, the US should do a serious assessment of why, despite 140000 NATO troops plus 250,000 Afghan troops & reportedly $1 trillion spent on war in Afghanistan, the Taliban today are stronger than before.
— Imran Khan (@ImranKhanPTI) November 19, 2018
It didn't take long for Trump to respond to Khan's criticism, as he took to Twitter to claim that Pakistan was well aware of Osama Bin Laden living in "a nice mansion" in Pakistan and never told the US about it despite all the financial help the country had received from Washington. Trump added that Pakistan was another country that takes "from the United States without giving anything in return" and promised that the time when taking such an approach was possible had come to an end.
Of course we should have captured Osama Bin Laden long before we did. I pointed him out in my book just BEFORE the attack on the World Trade Center. President Clinton famously missed his shot. We paid Pakistan Billions of Dollars & they never told us he was living there. Fools!..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 19, 2018
President Trump accused Islamabad of harbouring Osama Bin Laden in an interview with Fox News on 18 November. He noted that the former terrorist head had lived basically next to the country's prestigious military academy. Bin Laden was killed in 2011 by US Special Forces in his house in Abbottabad, where he was hiding.
