Former President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he would strike a peace deal to end the Ukraine war “within 24 hours” if he were commander-in-chief.
“Russia would not have invaded Ukraine if I were in the White House, and what’s going on there is a horror show,” Trump said during an interview on Salem News Channel’s America First with Sebastian Gorka.
The 45th president shared his belief with Gorka that the media are drastically underreporting the number of deaths in the war.
“Those cities are being leveled, I mean, they’re being leveled. I’ve looked photos and aerials of cities where there’s not a building standing, and then they’ll say two people were injured – no many, many people are being killed,” he later explained.
He insisted that “the right president” could strike a peace deal, but it would have been much easier at the outset of the war:
A deal has to be made… And a deal could negotiated by the right president. If you have a president that knows what he’s doing, you can negotiate a deal even right now – it would have been a lot easier early. I always said Putin put those soldiers on the border and I said ‘Oh he’s looking to negotiate.’ I was actually a little surprised he did it because nothing happened during… my term.
“I would have that war ended within 24 hours,” he later added. “That war would end within 24 hours. That war would never have started.”
In Trump’s view, Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, where 13 U.S. servicemembers were killed in August 2021, served as a catalyst for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“The way they left Afghanistan was such a disaster. I think the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country. It showed gross incompetence, and I think that probably helped the decision to go into Ukraine,” he told Gorka.
After President Joe Biden sent 31 Abrams M1 main battle tanks to Ukraine forces, Trump called for peace negotiations last month, Breitbart News reported.
NEW VIDEO: President Trump Calls for Immediate De-escalation and Peace pic.twitter.com/h6x1VRkn5b
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) February 1, 2023
“It’s far past the time for all parties involved to pursue a peaceful end to the war in Ukraine before this already horrific catastrophe spirals out of control and ends up leading, indeed, to World War III,” he said.
