Army deserter Bowe Bergdahl says the Taliban was more “honest” with him than U.S. jailers

In his first interview since being released from captivity — and perhaps one of his only interviews, if sentenced to life in prison on Oct. 23 — convicted deserter and U.S. Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl says he found the Taliban more “honest” captors than his current jailers in the U.S.

“At least the Taliban were honest enough to say, ‘I’m the guy who’s gonna cut your throat,'” he told journalist Sean Langan, according to Fox News, citing the British Sunday Times. “Here, it could be the guy I pass in the corridor who’s going to sign the paper that sends me away for life.”

“My greatest fear was having my throat cut in the dark,” Langan, who has also been held captive by the Taliban, offered, to which Bergdahl agreed.

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He also lamented that President Donald Trump had made him a talking point long before his trial and guilty plea. As a candidate, Trump called Bergdahl a “dirty, rotten traitor,” and said Bergdahl would have been “shot” when “America was strong.”

In January, Bergdahl’s lawyers filed a motion to dismiss, arguing that a fair trial was impossible after months of President Donald Trump’s public cheering of Bergdahl’s possible death. The president had “transformed his rallies into a televised traveling lynch mob,” they wrote in the motion at the time.

Asked about it in the interview, Bergdahl said, “We may as well go back to kangaroo courts and lynch mobs.”