The comments marked a surprising split with U.S. conservatives dating back to President Ronald Reagan, who saw the invasion as an attempt to spread communism and aided insurgent forces fighting Soviet troops.



"The most shameless Soviet propagandist never claimed that Afghan terrorists were attacking Russia," said Barnett Rubin, an Afghanistan expert at New York University. "You can read all Soviet media in the 1980s and never find anything this ridiculous."



There was ultimately a problem with extremism in Afghanistan, but it developed largely after the USSR left, and the mujahideen groups that sprang up to fight the Soviets devolved into the Taliban.



On Friday, the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board ripped the president, writing, "This mockery is a slander against every ally that has supported the U.S. effort in Afghanistan with troops who fought and often died." The board called Trump's representation of the Soviet invasion "reprehensible" and "false."