President Trump Returns To Florida After Surprise Visit To Afghanistan

MIAMI (CBSMiami/AP) - President Donald Trump is back at Mar-a-Lago on Monday afternoon after spending his first Thanksgiving with the troops in Afghanistan.

The president is in Florida to spend the holiday weekend.

Trump took off early Friday from Bagram Air Field after several hours with U.S. troops and a brief meeting with Afghanistan's president, Ashraf Ghani.

Trump said the U.S. and the Taliban have been engaged in peace talks and he thinks the Taliban want to make a deal that would end America's longest war.

The leader of the free world took off early Friday from Bagram Air Field.

Trump abruptly broke off peace talks with the Taliban in September, canceling a secret meeting with at Camp David after a bombing in Kabul that killed 12 people, including an American soldier. It was not immediately clear how long or substantive the U.S. reengagement with the Taliban has been.

White House spokesman Judd Deere says Ghani was notified of Trump's visit a few hours before his arrival and accepted an invitation to meet at the base.

He says he flew 8,331 miles to be there to tell them the U.S. has never been stronger. He says, "There is nowhere I'd rather celebrate Thanksgiving."

Trump spoke to a crowd of about 1,500 troops gathered in a hangar on the base. He stood behind a podium surrounded by army green sandbags and flanked by military equipment.

Tens of thousands of Afghan civilians and more than 2,400 American service members have been killed since America's longest war began 18 years ago.

Trump spent time in Iraq last year during the Christmas holidays.

(© Copyright 2019 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)