On a visit to Afghanistan, President Trump indicated that “for a period of time, we’ve been wanting to make a deal and so have the Taliban. Then we pulled back… and since then, we’ve hit them so hard, they’ve never been hit this hard. In the history of the war, they have not – never been hit hard. And they want to make a deal. So we’ll see what happens. If they make it, fine. If they don’t make it, that’s fine”. He added that “we’re bringing down the number of troops substantially… and we’ll be down at a number that’s very – it’s a good number. And we’re going to stay until such time as we have a deal or we have total victory. And they want to make a deal very badly”.