I hate the idea of Russia paying Taliban to kill Americans, but don't know why.

[PufPuf23]

12. Have little doubt that there is a PDB given to Trump about Russian bounties in Afghanistan

But bounty or not, Russian bounties do not appear to have had any impact.

Isn't this (financial support to proxies) business as usual and something the USA does as well?

That said I do not dismiss Trump ignoring intelligence and sniffing Putin's anus.

But the fatality facts are:

U.S. fatalities by month in only Afghanistan according to iCasualties.org
Year J F M A M J J A S O N D Total
2001 – – – – – – – – – 2 2 3 7
2002 10 1 9 4 1 3 0 1 0 0 0 1 30
2003 4 1 8 2 1 2 1 4 1 3 6 0 33
2004 9 2 3 1 8 4 2 3 4 5 7 1 49
2005 2 1 5 18 4 26 2 15 11 4 2 3 93
2006 1 7 7 1 11 18 9 10 6 10 7 1 88
2007 0 12 3 8 11 12 13 18 8 9 11 6 111
2008 7 1 7 5 16 28 20 22 27 16 1 3 153
2009 14 15 13 6 12 24 44 51 37 59 17 18 310
2010 30 31 24 19 34 60 65 55 42 60 53 33 496
2011 24 18 29 46 35 47 37 70 42 31 18 15 412
2012 26 10 18 34 39 29 41 39 19 17 16 13 301
2013 3 1 15 13 19 17 11 11 8 9 3 10 120
2014 7 6 0 4 4 13 3 5 5 2 3 3 54
2015 0 0 0 1 1 2 0 3 1 8 0 6 22
2016 3 0 0 0 0 1 0 2 0 3 4 1 14
2017 0 0 1 3 0 3 1 3 2 1 2 1 17
2018 1 0 0 1 0 0 2 1 2 1 5 2 15
2019 2 0 2 3 2 2 3 3 2 0 2 1 22
2020 4 3 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 9

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualties_in_the_War_in_Afghanistan