In another foreign policy victory for President Donald Trump’s administration, the Taliban, the governing political entity of Afghanistan, has released an American prisoner after more than two years in captivity.
The hostage, George Glezmann, was released after a flurry of diplomatic negotiations between Trump administration officials and Taliban officials in Qatar, Fox News reported.
“Glezmann departed the Kabul airport Wednesday evening local time on his way to Doha where he will then be met by U.S. hostage envoy Adam Boehler along with a team from the Qatari Foreign Ministry,” the report said.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on X: “George Glezmann is free. George was wrongfully detained in Afghanistan for two and a half years, but now he’s on his way to be reunited with his wife Aleksandra. Welcome home, George!”
The freed hostage’s wife praised the Trump administration for the work in getting him released.
“I can’t wait to see George and help him on his road to recovery as we rebuild our lives,” his wife Aleksandra said.
“Since the first day of the Trump administration, his team has focused on securing George’s safe release. The skill and dedication demonstrated by Secretary Rubio, Mr. Waltz, and Mr. Boehler has been refreshing,” she said. “It is clear to us that their dedication to the American people is unwavering.”
Rubio, meanwhile, clarified this month that the South African ambassador to the United States is no longer welcome.
Rubio posted to social media platform X, calling Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool “a race-baiting politician who hates America and hates @POTUS.”
“We have nothing to discuss with him and so he is considered PERSONA NON GRATA,” Rubio continued regarding Rasool as he linked to a Breitbart News article that reported disparaging comments the South African diplomat made about President Donald Trump.
The diplomat was expelled after he told those gathered at a recent event that Trump was leading a white supremacist movement around the world.
While addressing the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA) in Johannesburg, Rasool sought to clarify Trump’s recent foreign policy positions, specifically his opposition to South Africa’s property expropriation legislation and its alliances with Iran, Hamas, and other nations.
“What Donald Trump is launching is an assault on incumbency, those who are in power, by mobilizing a supremacism against the incumbency, at home, and — I think I’ve illustrated — abroad as well,” Rasool said, per Breitbart.
“So in terms of that, the supremacist assault on incumbency, we see it in the domestic politics of the USA, the MAGA movement, the Make America Great Again movement, as a response not simply to a supremacist instinct, but to very clear data that shows great demographic shifts in the USA in which the voting electorate in the USA is projected to become 48% white,” he continued.
“And that the possibility of a majority of minorities is looming on the horizon. And so that needs to be factored in, so that we understand some of the things that we think are instinctive, nativist, racist things, I think that there’s data that, for example, would support that, that would go to this wall being built, the deportation movement, et cetera et cetera. So I think I’d mention that,” he added.
“It’s no accident that Elon Musk has involved himself in UK politics, and elevated a Nigel Farage and the Reform movement, in much the same way that he was instructed that on his way to the Munich security summit, Vice President Vance addressed the Alternative für Deutschland [AfD] to strengthen them in their election campaign,” the banned South African diplomat droned on.
“And that, then, begins to say, what then was the role of Afrikaners in that whole makeup. And very clearly, it’s to project white victimhood as a dog whistle that there is a global protective movement that is beginning to envelop embattled white communities or apparently embattled white communities,” he said.
