The RNC deleted a webpage hailing Trump's Taliban deal as fighters swept Afghanistan, but says it was part of routine web maintenance

• The Republican National Committee removed a page hailing Trump's 2020 deal with the Taliban.
• The removal was made on Sunday, amid scenes of chaos in Kabul as the Taliban seized power.
• The RNC said the page was removed as part of routine web maintenance.

The Republican National Committee removed a webpage hailing President Donald Trump's peace deal with the Taliban. But it said it was done not to distance itself from the policy in response to the militant group's seizing power, but as part of routine web maintenance.

The webpage, which was first posted on the Republican National Committee's website during last year's presidential election, hailed Trump's foreign-policy achievements. An archived version of the page can be found here.

Wayback Machine, an internet-archive site, said the page was removed on August 15, as chaotic scenes emerged from Kabul of US forces evacuating officials from its embassy as Taliban militants seized control of the country.

Here's a screenshot of the archived version of the webpage, which was recorded on Wayback Machine:

And here's what it looked like as of Monday morning:

The apparent removal of the page was first highlighted by the Washington Post reporter Dave Weigel.

The page had praised Trump's attempts to end the US's two-decade military involvement in Afghanistan, describing how he "continued to take the lead in peace talks as he signed a historic peace agreement with the Taliban in Afghanistan, which would end America's longest war."

The page referred to a February 2020 conditional peace deal between Trump and the Taliban, which committed the US to cutting the number of troops in Afghanistan if the Taliban did not provide support to terrorist groups.

The page went on to say that Trump's rival, presidential candidate Joe Biden, had a "history of pushing for endless wars," and it listed the times he had called for more troops to be deployed in Afghanistan.

The RNC pushed back against the claim that the page was removed in response to events in Afghanistan. It said the page was removed as part of a process, which started last week, of transferring old posts to a new website.

"This is so dishonest. We launched a new website last week… some of the old posts haven't been carried over yet. Go look… all blog/research pieces from years ago aren't there. But good try attempting to divert attention from the folks actually in charge of this disaster," Mike Reed, the deputy chief of staff at the RNC, tweeted in response to a post from Weigel.

Insider has verified that no posts from last year remain on the RNC's current site.

President Biden remained committed to withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan while in office, pledging earlier this year to complete the pullout by September 11 despite the Taliban rapidly gaining strength and seizing swaths of territory from embattled Afghan security forces.

Observers have drawn parallels between the US' withdrawal from Afghanistan with its shambolic retreat from Saigon in 1975 after its defeat in the Vietnam War.

Trump had made his pledge to end America's so-called "forever wars" in the Middle East and Central Asia one of the centerpieces of his reelection campaign last year. Biden had long opposed US involvement in Afghanistan, though on the campaign trail he signaled that he was considering keeping a small US military presence in the country, a decision he later reversed.

But as the Taliban routed the Afghan army and swept back into power just weeks after the US withdrew most of its forces on July 8, both Trump and Biden have been seeking to blame each other for the crisis.

Trump has called on Biden to resign, claiming that he failed to follow Trump's withdrawal plan. Biden has said that Trump's Taliban deal left him with little option but to fully withdraw US troops.