More than a dozen billboards in Pennsylvania show Joe Biden dressed as a Taliban fighter and bearing the words, “Making the Taliban Great Again.” The billboards and their message, a clear reference to the slapdash withdrawal from Afghanistan, have caused some curiosity. But the man behind the billboards has come forward to take credit and to explain his reasons.
As Fox News reported:
A former Pennsylvania state senator is telling Fox News Wednesday that he has put up around 15 billboards locally with a photo of President Biden in military gear alongside the message “Making the Taliban Great Again.”
Scott Wagner, a Republican who represented a district that includes York County from 2014 to 2018, said in an email that he has “several reasons” for sharing the message across Pennsylvania.
“The pull out rushed through by President Biden had made us the laughing stock of the world,” he wrote. “The Taliban are openly stating that they ran the United States out of Afghanistan – they are now very emboldened.”
Wagner left his seat in the state legislature in 2018 when he ran for governor as the Republican candidate. He was defeated in that race by the incumbent, Democrat Governor Tom Wolf. His background is in business. After some small real estate deals in his early adulthood, he branched out into other businesses including waste management and trucking.
It appears that Wagner paid for the 15 or so billboards out of his own pocket with a plan to leave them up for two months because he wanted to send a message. “What do we say to families who lost loved ones in the Middle East — the country these people served and died for left Afghanistan with its tail between its legs,” he told Fox News, adding, “It seems that President Biden was hell bent on rushing out of Afghanistan — his ego and lack on information is going to prove to be very bad for the United States.”
Wagner told Fox News that he met hundreds of veterans during his time in the Pennsylvania State Senate and said the freedoms “young people have experienced since we landed in their country will be taken away now that the Taliban is in control.” Wagner clearly shares the opinion of many that the Afghanistan fiasco — which left almost $100 billion in American weapons, including aircraft and other high-tech weapons, in the hands of the Taliban — belongs squarely at the feet of the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
The billboards make that point very clearly. After four years of a president who — regardless of anyone’s opinion of him — pressed an agenda to Make America Great Again, the current occupant of that office appears determined to cast himself as the anti-Trump. “Making the Taliban Great Again” seems to fit that plan very well.
