Donald Trump continued pushing his oft-repeated lies about Russia’s three-year invasion of neighboring Ukraine Saturday earlier than an viewers of right-wing activists more and more sympathetic to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
Trump expounded on the subject of the struggle between the 2 nations for a number of minutes on the Conservative Political Motion Convention in a suburb of Washington, D.C., however by no means talked about that Putin began the battle.
He additionally repeated one in all his favourite lies concerning the navy and humanitarian help the previous Soviet republic has acquired from the USA and Western Europe: “Europe has given $100 billion. The USA has given $350 billion as a result of we had a silly, incompetent president and administration.”
In fact, Europe is offering or has already supplied Ukraine $204.1 billion in help, whereas the USA has supplied $183 billion.
What’s extra, the overwhelming majority of that American assist has remained in the USA. A full 70% of the $183 billion was “draw-down authority” on current Pentagon munitions — that means that $128 billion truly paid for protection contracts and jobs at U.S. factories to interchange previous weaponry given to Ukraine with new, extra fashionable inventory.
Trump, nonetheless, is demanding that Ukraine pay again the USA by handing over mineral rights. “We’re asking for uncommon earth and oil, something we are able to get. However we really feel so silly,” he mentioned.
Trump additionally solid the struggle as one thing that “by no means would have occurred” had he remained in workplace and described the 2 sides equally as victims of the struggle.
“It’s obtained to finish. It’s a horrible, horrible factor to look at,” he mentioned. “I’m coping with President Zelenskyy. I’m coping with President Putin.”
Prior to now week, Trump has gone even additional siding with Russia. He has known as democratically elected Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy “a dictator,” however has had solely form phrases for Putin, who has not held free and truthful elections in a long time and guidelines as an autocrat, even having his political opponents and critics killed. Consultants have described his missile assaults in opposition to civilian housing in Ukrainian cities and his troops’ homicide and rape of Ukrainians as doubtless struggle crimes.
The CPAC viewers displayed a decidedly pro-Putin tilt, a development that’s intensified since Trump was first elected in 2016. When Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni in an earlier speech Saturday criticized Russia’s aggression, the group remained silent. And on Thursday, when Home Speaker Mike Johnson fielded a query about whether or not Congress would applicable extra money for Ukraine, the viewers loudly booed the thought.
Trump’s speech lasted an hour and quarter-hour, and included lots of his favourite matters, together with mendacity that the 2020 election had been stolen from him; describing the home terrorists who assaulted police on his behalf throughout his Jan. 6, 2021, tried self-coup as “political prisoners;” spreading debunked claims linking vaccines and autism; spreading a separate conspiracy principle about whether or not the gold stored at Fort Knox has been stolen; insulting former President Joe Biden; insulting Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren; insulting former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg; insulting his 2024 Democratic opponent Kamala Harris; and mendacity that tariffs are one way or the other paid for overseas nations moderately than American importers and customers.
