President Trump tried but failed on Wednesday to offer journalists a history lesson, claiming that the Soviet Union collapsed because it went bankrupt after invading Afghanistan. Trump made the remarks during a televised cabinet meeting, noting that “Russia used to be the Soviet Union” until “Afghanistan made it Russia.” Though he is, by his own account, a stable genius, experts were quick to pick holes in the president’s version of events, particularly his claim that “the reason Russia was in Afghanistan was because terrorists were going into Russia.” The Soviet Union entered Afghanistan to boost Afghanistan’s communist government as part of a bid to prop up communism overseas; they did not invade to fight terrorism at home. Experts were also taken aback by Trump’s assertion that the Soviet Union was “right” to invade Afghanistan. “The problem is, it was a tough fight. And literally they went bankrupt; they went into being called Russia again, as opposed to the Soviet Union,” he said, adding that “a lot of these places you’re reading about now are no longer part of Russia, because of Afghanistan.” It wasn’t clear what places he was referring to. Trump’s comments quickly blew up in Russian media, with Kremlin friendly news sites like REN-TV appearing to lightly mock him for discovering an “extremely curious” reason for the fall of the Soviet Union. Other headlines noted that Trump had “praised the Soviet Union for invading Afghanistan.” The Kremlin has yet to comment on Trump’s remarks.
