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rump seemed to endorse Moscow’s 1979 invasion of the country — an act that the . viewed as an attempt to spread munism and waged a long, covert operation to bat during the Carter and Reagan administrations.“The reason Russia was in Afghanistan was because terrorists were going into Russia,” Trump said, making a case to leave the policing of hot spots in the Mideast and Central Asia to countries in the region. “They were right to be there. The problem is it was a tough fight.”The Soviet Union eventually was bankrupted by its Afghan war, Trump added. “Russia used to be the Soviet Union. Afghanistan made it Russia, because they went bankrupt fighting in Afghanistan.”Historians generally agree that the Russian invasion and subsequent occupation of much of Afghanistan was one of several factors that contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union, although the country never went years, Republicans have credited President Reagan with bringing an end to the Soviet Union by his aggressive increase in . military ’s ments stood in stark contrast to the view Mattis espoused in the resignation letter he presented last month after failing to convince the president to hold off on withdrawing from Syria.“We must do everything possible to advance an international order that is most conducive to our security, prosperity and values, and we are strengthened in this effort by the solidarity of our alliances,” Mattis ’ ments clearly stung Trump, who responded last month with criticism of his former Pentagon chief. On Wednesday, he stepped that up, claiming that he fired Mattis.“What39。s he done for me? How had he done in Afghanistan? Not too good,” Trump said. “As you know, President Obama fired him, and essentially so did I.”O(jiān)bama did not fire Mattis, although the general did retire several months early in 2013 from his position as the head of the military’s Central Command after dissenting from Obama administration policy was Mattis’ final day at the Pentagon. Trump, in a fit of pique after the resignation letter became public, had moved up Mattis’ termination dateIn addition to his foreign policy ments, Trump also downplayed December’s stock market losses, which erased all positive gains for the year, as “a little glitch” and asserted — wrongly — that there are “probably 3035 million” immigrants in the . illegally. The nonpartisan Pew Research