Credit: CNN
Donald Trump claims he threatened to “bomb the s— out of Moscow” if Russia invaded Ukraine during his first term, according to new leaked audio.
“With Putin I said: ‘If you go into Ukraine, I’m going to bomb the s— out of Moscow. I’m telling you I have no choice’,” Mr Trump told a group of donors before last year’s presidential election.
“And then [Putin] goes, like, ‘I don’t believe you’. But he believed me 100 per cent.”
The US president later claimed that he issued a similar warning to Xi Jinping over China potentially invading Taiwan, telling him he would bomb Beijing in response.
“He thought I was crazy,” Mr Trump said of Xi, before adding that “we never had a problem”.
Mr Trump made the remarks to a series of fundraisers as he campaigned for re-election last year. The leaked audio was published by CNN after it was obtained by the authors of a forthcoming book that chronicles Mr Trump’s return to power.
The comments echo claims Mr Trump has repeatedly made in public, including that he prevented the wars from starting during his first term and would have done so had he won the 2020 election.
Donald Trump claims he warned Putin not to invade Ukraine – Alexander Kazakov/Reuters
“If I were president, this war would have never happened,” he has claimed a number of times, including at the G7 summit in Canada last month.
In October last year, he said he had warned Putin not to invade Ukraine. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal he claims he said: “‘I’m going to hit you right in the middle of fricking Moscow.’ I said, ‘We’re friends. I don’t want to do it, but I have no choice’. He goes, ‘No way’. I said, ‘Way’.”
Mr Trump has grown increasingly frustrated, however, as his efforts to end the wars in Ukraine and Gaza appear to have stalled.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, left the White House on Tuesday without announcing that a ceasefire in Gaza had been reached.
‘I’m not happy with Putin’
The US president also launched another furious tirade against Putin on Tuesday, accusing the Russian leader of “throwing bull—-” at him in their discussions about the war in Ukraine.
He said Putin’s words were “meaningless” as he ramped up his rhetoric against the Russian leader following a series of major strikes on Ukrainian cities.
“I’m not happy with Putin, I can tell you that much right now, because he’s killing a lot of people,” Mr Trump said during a cabinet meeting on Tuesday. “We get a lot of bulls— thrown at us by Putin. You want to know the truth. He is very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.”
Mr Trump also suggested he was open to imposing fresh sanctions on Moscow after the Senate put forward a bill proposing additional penalties. Asked about the bill, he said: “I’m looking at it very strongly.”
