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 warfare 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 among his favourite lies in regards to the navy and humanitarian help the previous Soviet republic has acquired from the US 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 US has supplied $183 billion.
What’s extra, the overwhelming majority of that American support has remained in the US. A full 70% of the $183 billion was “draw-down authority” on current Pentagon munitions — that means that $128 billion really paid for protection contracts and jobs at U.S. factories to switch outdated weaponry given to Ukraine with new, extra trendy inventory.
Trump, nonetheless, is demanding that Ukraine pay again the US by handing over mineral rights. “We’re asking for uncommon earth and oil, something we will get. However we really feel so silly,” he stated.
Trump additionally solid the warfare 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 warfare.
“It’s bought to finish. It’s a horrible, horrible factor to observe,” he stated. “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 towards civilian housing in Ukrainian cities and his troops’ homicide and rape of Ukrainians as possible warfare crimes.
The CPAC viewers displayed a decidedly pro-Putin tilt, a pattern 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 acceptable extra money for Ukraine, the viewers loudly booed the concept.
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Trump’s speech lasted an hour and quarter-hour, and included a lot of his favourite subjects, 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 idea 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 someway paid for overseas nations relatively than American importers and customers.
