The former president told Elon Musk there had been “zero chance” of hostilities until the current American leader opened his mouth.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has accused US President Joe Biden of bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war by making “stupid threats” against Russia, blaming the Ukraine conflict on Biden’s “low IQ.”
Trump has often claimed that the conflict never would have happened had he still been in the White House in early 2022. In a livestreamed conversation with X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk on Monday, the former US president said he had viewed Russia’s troop buildup on the Ukrainian border as a negotiating tactic.
“I thought [Russian President Vladimir Putin] was doing that – because Putin’s a good negotiator – I thought he was doing that to negotiate,” Trump stated. “But then Biden started saying such stupid things. For instance, he said that ‘[Ukraine] can be a NATO country.’ Now, Russia, for as long as there’s been NATO, said ‘we’re never going to agree to that,’ and we go right up front and say that.”
For decades, Ukraine’s potential accession to NATO has been recognized in Washington as “the brightest of all red lines” for Moscow, current CIA director and former US ambassador to Russia William Burns wrote in 2008. Nevertheless, the White House rejected a draft treaty put forward by Putin in late 2021 that would have prevented the conflict in return for a halt to NATO’s eastward expansion.
“I could have stopped that, and a smart president could have stopped that. It was so bad, the words that [Biden] was using, the stupid threats coming out of his stupid face… that could lead to World War III,” Trump continued.
Trump claimed that he had a good relationship with Putin, but that he had personally threatened the Russian leader with consequences if he sent troops into Ukraine: “I said ‘don’t do it. You can’t do it Vladimir. You do it, it’s gonna be a bad day.’ I told him things, what I’d do, and he said ‘no way’. And I said ‘way.’”
“And you know it’s the last time we ever had that conversation,” Trump added. “I got along well with him. I hope to get along well with him again.”
The Kremlin has never confirmed or denied that such a conversation took place during Trump’s time in office.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that he would stop the Ukraine conflict within 24 hours if elected president this November. He has never fully elaborated on how he would do this, but recent media reports suggest that he would leverage the massive US military assistance to Kiev to pressure Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky into accepting some territorial losses in exchange for peace.
However, Trump did not lobby his congressional allies to block a $61 billion aid package to Kiev in April, and said at the time that he would support lending, rather than gifting, money to Kiev in future. Trump did not discuss future US aid to Ukraine with Musk, instead calling on EU nations to increase their own contributions.
