Former President Donald Trump slammed President Biden Thursday for allegedly giving Russia the “green light” to invade Ukraine during his chaotic press conference – and suggested something wasn’t “normal” with the commander-in-chief.
“When he said ‘they may go in, they will go in,’ and he talks about a ‘minor incursion,’ I sort of said, ‘I don’t believe he said that,’ because that’s giving the green light,” Trump told Fox News’ Sean Hannity during a wide-ranging interview.
“He really told them to go in,” Trump added. “I think this is a whole different ball game right now.”
Biden set off alarms in Kiev during his first solo press conference in 10 months when he initially vowed that “Russia will be held accountable” if it launches an attack against Ukraine, but then softened his own vow by saying: “It depends on what it does.”
“It’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion, and then we end up having a fight about what to do and what not do, etc.,” the president went on. “But if they actually do what they’re capable of doing with the force they’ve massed on the border, it is going to be a disaster for Russia.”
The White House repeatedly attempted to walk back Biden’s comment over the following 24 hours, beginning with a hastily issued statement by press secretary Jen Psaki Wednesday evening and ending with the president himself insisting Thursday that any movement of Russian forces into Ukraine would be “met with [a] severe and coordinated economic response.”
On Thursday night, Trump repeated earlier suggestions that Biden is struggling cognitively, telling Hannity: “When you watch the press conference, I don’t want to be the one to say, but that’s not a normal situation going on there.”
The 45th president kicked off the interview by appearing to offer diplomatic support for his successor – but soon began rattling off a list of Biden’s purported shortfalls during his first year in office.
“I want him to forget politics, I want him to do well. He’s got to do well,” Trump said. “Our country is in trouble … I don’t think we’ve ever had anything like it in this country.”
The former president added that he was “ashamed” of the state of America, citing the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, decades-high inflation and the ongoing border crisis throughout the interview.
“I think our country has never been so disrespected as it is right now by the rest of the world, the leaders of the rest of the world. I don’t think we’ve ever been in this position,” Trump said.
“Even I, I look at it and I feel ashamed at what’s happened in the last year with our country. I’m ashamed of what’s going on, and so are Americans.”
He added: “Our country is in a terrible way. No one is respecting our country anymore.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Trump bashed his successor for a border policy that has seen record numbers of illegal immigrants flooding into the US from Central and South America.
“We would have had the wall completed in three weeks, which was largely completed, we did almost 500 miles of wall and the southern border,” Trump said.
“It was really working, it really had an impact, and we were working along with Mexico and Guatemala, Honduras. We were in El Salvador; all of these countries.
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“So we had the most secure border we’ve ever had … And then it’s all gone in one instant,” he continued. “At first, I thought it was gross incompetence, but now it’s incompetent policy. They really want to have an open border.”
Turning to the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump suggested that vaccine hesitancy was linked to people’s feelings about the current commander-in-chief.
“We did such a great job,” Trump said of his administration’s handling of the pandemic crisis. “We haven’t been getting the credit we deserve.”
Trump said his administration had left Biden with vaccines and therapeutics created by Operation Warp Speed, “but they haven’t known how to use them and I think that people don’t trust them.”
“I don’t think they trust Biden, they don’t trust the administration and that’s why they’re not taking them to the extent that they should be.”
