WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday condemned President Joe Biden’s decision to send cluster bombs as part of a new US aid package to Ukraine, warning it could lead to World War III.
Trump shared his position in a lengthy statement released by his campaign. It comes five days after the Pentagon formally announced the decision, and one day after his former vice president and now rival for the GOP presidential nomination, Mike Pence, expressed his support for the measure.
“Joe Biden should not drag us further into World War 3 by sending cluster munitions to the Ukraine; he should try to END the war and stop the horrible death and destruction that an incompetent administration is causing,” Trump said.
In his statement, Trump echoed the argument of many critics, including those on the left, saying that unexploded cluster munitions “will kill and maim innocent Ukrainian men, women and children for decades to come, long after the war.”
The former president then attacked Biden for saying in an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria over the weekend that the reason for sending the ammunition was because the US itself is low on ammunition.
“[T]The Ukrainians are running out of ammunition. … This is a munitions related war, and they are running out of that munitions and we are running out of it,” Biden said.
“A major classified information breach,” said Trump, who was indicted in June on 37 federal counts related to more than 100 classified documents recovered from Mar-a-Lago last year.
The White House did not immediately respond Tuesday to a request for comment on whether Biden publicly shared classified information.
“It certainly means we shouldn’t be sending our last stockpiles to Ukraine at a time when our own arsenals, according to Crooked Joe Biden, are so dangerously depleted,” Trump said.
He added that Biden’s “humiliating admission that America is now out of ammunition” is “something our enemies are no doubt salivating over.”
Triumph done the same say about the reservations in a 2019 White House press conference with the president of Italy. He said at the time that the United States had no ammunition when he first took office.
“When I took office, I was a mess,” Trump said. “One of our generals came to see me and said: ‘Sir, we have no ammunition.’ I said, ‘That’s a terrible thing you just said.’ He said: ‘We have no ammunition.’ Now we have more ammunition than ever.”
Trump concluded his statement Tuesday by saying there must be an immediate end to the “bloodshed in Ukraine” and a “return to a focus on America’s vital interests.”
Trump did not offer any alternative solutions that he would have acted on if he were currently president.
Since the invasion of Russia in February 2022, Trump has repeatedly refused to publicly commit to pledging support for Ukraine. In May, he derailed several times during a CNN town hall when asked if he would supply Ukraine with weapons and equipment as president.
He also claimed that the war would never have happened on his watch and that he could broker a deal between Russia and Ukraine. in 24 hours.
Meanwhile, NBC News reached out to most of the 2024 Republican Party presidential campaigns Monday for comment to gauge where other candidates stand on the ammunition issue.
Just the former UN Ambassador. Nikki Haley responded; she said she supports the decision.
