Daily Times

WASHINGTON: A day after firing a tirade at Pakistan during an interview to the Fox News, US President Donald Trump on Monday repeated his rants saying that Washington stopped paying Islamabad because “they would take our money and do nothing for us.”

“They [Pakistan] were just one of many countries that take from the United States without giving anything in return That’s ENDING!” the US president wrote on his Twitter handle. “We no longer pay Pakistan the $Billions because they would take our money and do nothing for us, Bin Laden being a prime example, Afghanistan being another,” he said in a series of tweets.

In another tweet, Trump said the US had paid Pakistan billions of dollars and they never informed that Osama bin Laden was living there. He said the US should have captured Osama bin Laden long before the 2011 Abbottabad raid. “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,” he added.

A day earlier, Trump had defended his administration’s decision to pull hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to Pakistan, saying the country “doesn’t do a damn thing for us.”

In an exclusive interview with Fox News, the US president had charged Pakistan for helping Osama bin Laden hide in the country. “You know, living – think of this – living in Pakistan, beautifully in Pakistan in what I guess they considered a nice mansion, I don’t know, I’ve seen nicer,” Trump had said, referring to bin Laden and his former compound in Abbottabad.

“But living in Pakistan right next to the military academy, everybody in Pakistan knew he was there,” he said. “And we give Pakistan $1.3 billion a year. … [bin Laden] lived in Pakistan, we’re supporting Pakistan, we’re giving them $1.3 billion a year -which we don’t give them anymore, by the way, I ended it because they don’t do anything for us, they don’t do a damn thing for us,” he added.

Published in Daily Times, November 20^th 2018.