Former President Donald Trump revealed how he would handle Russian aggression toward Ukraine if he were in office in a Feb. 22 interview with Clay Travis and Buck Sexton from his Mar-a-Lago property in Florida.
Trump pointed to his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin as a political card he could’ve played to prevent Putin from encroaching on Ukraine.
Putin recognized two regions of Ukraine as independent countries Feb. 21, ordering Russian military personnel into Donetsk and Luhansk. Days later, Russian forces invaded Ukraine.
President Joe Biden has proved incapable of deterring Russian aggression toward Ukraine, with new sanctions and negotiations failing to de-escalate the tenuous geopolitical situation.
Despite the affable personal relations between the two men, Trump insisted that he would have drawn a line at Putin’s territorial ambitions.
Trump summarized his stance against Putin’s maneuvering in four words.
“I knew that he always wanted Ukraine. I used to talk to him about it. I said, ‘You can’t do it. You’re not gonna do it.'”
Putin moved to acquire territory during the tenure of President Barack Obama as well, largely forgoing aggression during Trump’s presidency.
Trump said the current situation never would’ve amounted to a full-blown crisis if he were still in office.
“This never would have happened with us. Had I been in office, not even thinkable. This would never have happened.”
The 45th president described Putin’s decision to call Russian troops entering Ukraine “peacekeepers” as “genius,” suggesting he’d consider a similar strategy to secure the southern U.S. border.
“So Putin is now saying, ‘It’s independent,’ a large section of Ukraine. I said, ‘How smart is that?’ And he’s gonna go in and be a peacekeeper,” Trump said of Putin’s plan. “We could use that on our southern border.”
Trump went on to reveal he’d rather deploy American troops to the southern border than to Ukraine.
He also addressed his “extraordinary” polling numbers, arguing that Biden’s poor job performance made him a weak candidate against even the worst possible opponent.
“You take the worst politician in America — I would imagine that that person would be winning” against Biden, Trump said.
Trump also hit Biden on the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, calling it “the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country” and saying he would have removed American troops from Afghanistan with “tremendous strength and dignity and power and respect.”
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.