Trump has repeatedly made it known he wants to remove all U.S. troops from the 18-year-old Afghan conflict, a topic he returned to Friday afternoon as his advisers briefed him on the status of peace talks with the Taliban.

But his public statements and leaks of his closed-door demands have weakened the hand of his negotiators by making it clear just how desperately the president wants a deal, according to multiple current and former U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the deliberations. ...

For example, just weeks after Trump named Khalilzad as his top envoy to the talks in December, Trump blindsided his advisers with instructions to pull half of the American troops out immediately — an order he was then talked out of giving.

“You appoint someone to be your primary negotiator who’s empowered to carry out these meetings, and then six weeks later you tell everyone you’re handing your adversary half of what they want for nothing?” asked a former defense official who was working on Afghanistan issues at the time.

“The timing couldn’t have been worse. It was severely damaging,” agreed a current military official with recent experience in Kabul. “We’ve probably gone double the rounds [of negotiations] because the Taliban were like, ‘Hey, you’re leaving anyway. Why should we negotiate?’ ”