Former President Donald Trump has said he could have prevented a Russian invasion of Ukraine in an interview broadcast Monday as part of the first episode of Pierce Morgan’s new show.
Mr Trump, as combative as ever, told Mr Morgan in an interview that he had “threatened” Russian Vladimir Putin during his rule, warning that Moscow would face severe consequences for the invasion of Ukraine.
“I told him what our answer would be, and he said, ‘Really?’ And I said, ‘Really,'” the 45th president said. “I threatened him like he had never been threatened before.”
He also criticized Mr Putin for what he strangely called the latter’s use of the “word N”, which he used not for the racist epithet but instead for the Russian leader’s threats of nuclear revenge.
I call it the N-word. He uses the ‘N-word’, the nuclear word, all the time. This is a no-no. You don’t have to do that. He uses it every day, “said Mr Trump.
The former president said what he would say to Mr Putin in response: “I would say that we have many more than you, many, many more powerful than you, and you can never use that word again. You can never use the nuclear word again … And if you do, we will have problems. ”
Mr Trump’s remarks came as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine dragged on in its second month after Moscow’s failure to take over Ukraine’s capital Kyiv and the redistribution of Russian forces, which many believe was done to redirect the war to territorial seizure of land in eastern Ukraine and the south.
The former president and his Republican allies have been urging for weeks that the former president would be a tougher opponent of Mr Putin on the world stage than Joe Biden, who faces Republican guilt over the conflict. But Mr Trump’s own history with Mr Putin during his presidency is much more confusing, and instead suggests that Mr Trump may have accepted the false allegations that Russian diplomats have been pushing for for weeks as they approached. on the date of the invasion, in which they insisted that Russia really had no plans to invade Ukraine. at all.
After all, it was Donald Trump who appeared with Vladimir Putin at a press conference in 2018 and publicly rejected the findings of US intelligence agencies about Russian interference in the 2016 elections, telling reporters at the time that he saw no reason for the Russian government to did direct such an intervention.
The former president continued to praise his former counterpart a few days before the Russian invasion and praised the Kremlin’s order to direct Russian forces to the disputed Donbass region, where Russian-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces since 2014. At the time, Moscow insisted that the deployment was a “peacekeeping” force and would not be used to invade further Ukrainian territory, an explanation Mr Trump did not publicly dispute while praising the Russian military’s decision.
He has repeatedly criticized the US media in recent days for reporting on his latest praise for Russia’s military decision, saying reporters say he called Vladimir Putin himself a “genius”.
“Fake news also says that I called Putin a ‘genius’ when, in fact, to be precise, I called his accumulation on the border with Ukraine before the start of the war genius, because I assumed he could easily negotiate great talks. a deal for Russia, “he said in a recent statement.
He added in a speech to the Conference on Conservative Political Action (CPAC): “The problem is not that Putin is smart, which, of course, he is smart … The problem is that our leaders are stupid … and so far , allowed him to get away with this parody and attack on humanity. “
“Putin is playing Biden like a drum and it’s not a good thing to watch,” Mr Trump said.
The war in Ukraine has so far cost more than 2,300 deaths, a UN estimate that is thought to be low, as much of the massacre has yet to be solved. British intelligence estimates that some 15,000 Russian soldiers have lost their lives.
Negotiations to end the war have so far yielded no results, as Moscow has called for an end to regular supplies of weapons and equipment to Kyiv from the west, but has shown no signs of withdrawing from the attack.
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