The Taliban had kidnaped Joshua Boyle and his pregnant wife on a trip to Afghanistan in 2012. The captors would later kill his infant daughter, he said, and rape his wife, according to Joshua who described the entire experience as a “Kafka-esque nightmare.” Late last year, the couple were reportedly on the verge of making a video to show their loved ones that they were still alive.
That said, Joshua Boyle explained that he thought one of his captors was lying when his captors told him Donald Trump had been elected the President of the United States.
“It didn’t enter my mind that he was being serious,” Boyle, a Canadian national, told the Toronto Star days after being rescued.
The last time Boyle had access to the news that wasn’t controlled by his Taliban captors was in 2012 when Trump was only flirting with the idea of running for president.
The top issue at the time appeared to be whether or not President Barack Obama was born in the United States. Meanwhile, Trump was still just working on his reality TV show and focusing on his businesses.
In fact, according to the Guardian, in 2011 Trump said, “Business is my greatest passion, and I am not ready to leave the private sector.” Moreover, a study at the time found 71% of people thought Trump had no chance at becoming president.
Joshua Boyle, his wife Caitlan Coleman and their three children – all of them born in captivity – were rescued Wednesday in Pakistan, where their captors had moved them after their kidnapping in Afghanistan. Boyle described himself as a pilgrim and said he and his wife went to Afghanistan to try and help “the most neglected minority group in the world, those ordinary villagers who live deep inside Taliban-controlled Afghanistan … where no NGO, no aid worker, and no government has ever successfully been able to bring the necessary help.”