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... While Trump's speech mostly tried appealing to Flint's "Vehicle City" history, talking at length about manufacturing and tariffs, he took time to mention a claim about the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, a topic he's revisited throughout the 2024 presidential campaign.

Recalling the resources left behind at Bagram Air Base, Trump said that as well as discarding billions in military equipment, he alleged that dogs were also abandoned.

"But to give up and work to give up the biggest air base, military air base in the world," Trump said.

"And they left it in the dark of night with the lights on and they did leave the dogs behind.

"There are a lot of people. They say 'What about the dogs?'

"They left the dogs behind. But we would have been a much different country right now."

While U.S. forces did not take some dogs back with them as they left Afghanistan, Trump's claim omits important details about the types of animals that were left, who they belonged to, and efforts made since by nonprofits.

In 2021, the U.S. military denied reports that it had left military working dogs behind in Afghanistan and that photos being shared online of other dogs were misleading.

"Photos circulating online were animals under the care of the Kabul Small Animal Rescue, not dogs under the care of the U.S. military," the department's spokesperson told Newsweek at the time.

"Despite an ongoing complicated and dangerous retrograde mission, U.S. forces went to great lengths to assist the Kabul Small Animal Rescue as much as possible."

Pentagon Press Secretary Patrick Ryder said at the time that the U.S. military "did not leave any dogs in cages at Hamid Karzai International Airport." ...