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Donald Trump‘s latest attempt to pivot his campaign towards policy-oriented attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris saw him fall back into a familiar pattern of offering concessions to Vladimir Putin and Russia as he attempted to paint Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as pushing America towards a third world war.
The ex-president, who was speaking to members of the National Guard Association of the United States in in Detroit, appeared to take a stance against the recent Ukrainian incursion into Russian territory near Kursk.
The gaining of ground by Ukrainian troops, which analysts have said is meant to relieve pressure for Ukrainian troops elsewhere in the theater of war, Trump argued was actually another sign that “World War 3” was closer than ever.
“Look at what’s happening in Ukraine. They’re surging into Russia. You’re going to have World War 3,” he said.
Trump made his remarks just hours after he attended a memorial service at Arlington National Cemetery for 13 US service members killed in a suicide bombing during the chaotic pullout of US troops from Afghanistan in 2021.
There, the ex-president linked Biden’s management of that withdrawal — which Trump himself had initiated under a much-accelerated timeline — to the ongoing instability around the world.
The argument is one he has made in a less concise manner before, but he explained it again Monday before the members of the Guard.
Trump: Look at what's going on right now with Ukraine. They are surging into Russia. Ok? You are going to end up in world War III, pic.twitter.com/uCZQkJtobl
— Acyn (@Acyn) August 26, 2024
Trump further argued that the messy Afghanistan withdrawal from Kabul and the Abbey Gate attack “gave us Russia going into Ukraine. It gave us the October 7 attack in Israel”.
The ex-president’s remarks targeted his opponent and Joe Biden over the ongoing conflicts in the world, and also led to him taking credit for starting no new major conflicts during his presidency.
He did not mention his provocative threat to engulf North Korea in “fire and fury” in a Twitter post, nor his administration’s brush with direct conflict against Iran (including the targeted assassination of an Iranian Revolutionary Guard leader).
Monday’s event, which was centered around presenting Trump as a pro-peace candidate, was aided by an appearance by Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii and 2020 presidential contender.
Gabbard, who has made a career for herself since leaving Congress as a critic of Democrats who regularly appears on Fox News and in other right-wing media, famously clashed with Kamala Harris onstage in 2020 during a debate over Harris’s record as a prosecutor.
The ex-congresswoman, who is a serving National Guard officer, appeared onstage to say that she would be endorsing and supporting Trump ahead of November. She added that she’d do “all that I can to send President Trump back to the White House."
Donald Trump welcomes Tulsi Gabbard to the stage during a speech in front of the National Guard Association in Detroit, Michigan.
— The American Conservative (@amconmag) August 26, 2024
"She's got great common sense, great spirit, and she loves our country." pic.twitter.com/sDRoFStQ4j
Gabbard’s defection is one that Democrats have seen coming for a while. But the Trump campaign’s sudden focus on presenting their candidate as the only one who will end global conflicts comes as the Harris campaign faces new criticism from the left after the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
The DNC’s multi-day speaker list included family members of hostages held by Hamas militants in Gaza. It did not feature any Palestinian-American speakers — including several put forth by the “Uncommitted” movement ahead of and during the convention. Delegates and supporters of that movement held a protest outside of the convention hall last week and a number of Democratic electeds issued statements supporting their request for a speaking slot on the main convention stage.
Elsewhere on Monday, other members of the former president’s campaign were seeking to hammer home the same argument portraying Biden and Harris as unable to responsibly lead America’s armed forces.
JD Vance, on a Trump campaign press call, accused Harris and her boss in the White House of committing a “betrayal” by not calling for accountability and instituting changes after the withdrawal from Kabul and the Abbey Gate attack.
“Why has nobody been fired?” asked Vance on the call. “Why has nobody suffered any consequences for doing what happened, and again, squandering our most precious resource in this country, the lives of the people who are willing to give it all for public service?”
“The fact that the Harris administration has stonewalled at every step of the way, the fact that no one has been fired, suggests that we have a real crisis of leadership in this country,” the Ohio senator continued.
There are many factors of the Afghanistan pullout which have been targeted for criticism in the wake of the Taliban’s seizure of the country. Horrifiying scenes played out on the airstrip at Hamid Karzai International Airport as US forces failed to secure the runway and terrified Afghans tried to cling to massive cargo planes as they took off. Several died in the attempt.
The Abbey Gate attack itself was one of the largest single losses of US servicemembers in Afghanistan in years. It also led to the deaths and injuries of dozens of Afghan civilians who were hoping to enter the airstrip where planes were departing. A US strike in response, which sought to hit an Isis-aligned terrorist target, resulted instead in the deaths of an Afghan aid worker and nine members of his family, including seven children.
“As Vice President Harris has said, it was the courageous and right decision to end America’s longest war and bring our brave servicemembers home. The Biden-Harris Administration inherited a mess from Donald Trump. Trump wants America to forget that he had four years to get out of Afghanistan, but failed to do it. All he did was continue our longest war,” Harris campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa told The Independent on Monday when asked about their rivals’ latest criticisms. “Trump cannot be trusted to keep us safe, but Vice President Harris is a proven leader on the world stage and will use her expertise to ensure America’s security, defeat our adversaries, and stand with our allies around the world.”
Ryan Zinke, the Trump administration’s former Interior secretary, was another Trumpworld figure who tied the mismanagement of Afghanistan to the Biden administration’s larger foreign policy Monday on that press call.
“You know, our country faces a very distinct change, or just a distinct choice, and that choice is weak leadership, globalist leadership that we’ve seen in Afghanistan to Ukraine, which has led to the Pacific, which has led to Venezuela. We’re facing four major regional conflicts as a result of the Harris-Biden administration,” argued Zinke.
Trump himself went on at his event Monday to echo a familiar claim: that he could end the war between Russia and Ukraine within months of being elected president. The Republican candidate has been accused by his Democratic opponents of planning to bully Ukraine into giving up territory to achieve that goal. He himself has not laid out a specific plan for ending the war or preventing it from spreading to NATO-aligned countries in Eastern Europe.
During his presidency, Trump met with Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, at a major summit in 2018 between the two global powers. That summit ended with Trump publicly taking a stance against his own nation’s intelligence community regarding Russian hacking and interference efforts in the 2016 presidential election while Russia’s president stood beside him.
