World War III.2 - Republican Politicians

Donald Trump took aim at President Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, U.S. foreign policy and undocumented immigrants on 28 January 2023 as he kicked off his bid for a return to the White House. "Through weakness and incompetence, Joe Biden has brought us to the brink of World War III," Trump said. "We’re at the brink of World War III, just in case anybody doesn’t know it. As president, I will bring back peace through strength." He called Biden's botched American pullout from Afghanistan in 2021 "the lowest day in the history of our country" and claimed that if he were president, there would be "a peace deal negotiated within 24 hours" to end Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

"If you take a look right now, the 'nuclear' word is being mentioned all the time. This is a word you're not allowed to use. It was never used during the Trump administration," Trump said. "World War III would be a catastrophe unlike any other. This would make World War I and World War II like very small battles," Trump said. Trump claimed that nuclear threats are being made by other countries "because they have no respect for our leadership". To address this potential threat, Trump said he would "build a state of the art next generation missile defense shield, just as Israel is now protected by the Iron Dome." Trump said "America must have an impenetrable dome to protect our people".

Donald Trump believes that only his re-election as President of the United States in 2024 will save the country from World War III. He made the statement on 14 March 2023 at a rally of his supporters in Iowa. "I stand before you as the only candidate who can promise - I will prevent a third world war, because I believe that a third world war will happen," he said. “With this administration, we will come to the third world war, because they do not know how to speak correctly, send the right signals. They act hard when they need to be soft, and soft when they need to be hard,” Trump continued. “They don’t know what they are doing.” "To be honest, we're going to end up with a third world war, a big war with China and others." Trump promised, if elected president, to resolve the conflict in Ukraine in 24 hours.

"World War III has never been closer than it is right now," former US President Donald Trump said 21 February 2023. US President Joe Biden, continuing to support Ukraine, is pushing humanity towards a third world war. This point of view was expressed on February 21 by Trump in his account on the Truth Social social network. “If you follow and understand the steps that Biden is taking regarding Ukraine, he is systematically, but perhaps unconsciously, pushing us towards what could soon become a third world war. Isn’t that crazy?” he asked.

Trump vowed to "clean house of all of the warmongers and America's last globalists," stating that the Obama administration was behind the Maidan Uprising in Ukraine, which took place in 2014. "For decades, we've had the very same people, such as Victoria Nuland and many others just like her obsessed with pushing Ukraine toward NATO, not to mention the State Department support for uprisings in Ukraine," said Trump. Trump added that these people "have been seeking confrontation for a long time, much like the case in Iraq and other parts of the world."

"And now, we’re teetering on the brink of World War III."

"We need to clean house of all of the warmongers and America's last globalists in the deep state, the Pentagon, the State Department, and the national security industrial complex." Trump stated that one of the reasons "I was the only president in generations" not to start a war was because "I was the only president who rejected the catastrophic advice of many of Washington’s generals, bureaucrats, and the so-called diplomats who only know how to get us into conflict, but they don’t know how to get us out."

Trump stated " .... we need to get rid of the corrupt globalist establishment that has botched every major foreign policy decision for decades, and that includes President Biden, whose own people said he’s never made a good decision when it comes to looking at other countries and looking at wars."

"We never had it so good. We’ll also stop the lobbyists and the big defense contractors from going in and pushing our senior military and national security officials toward conflict, only to reward them when they retire with lucrative jobs getting paid millions and millions of dollars. Take a look at the globalist warmonger donors backing our opponents. That's because they're candidates of war," Trump said.

"We could end the Ukraine conflict in 24 hours with the right leadership. At the end of my next four years, the warmongers and frauds, and failures in the senior ranks of our government will all be gone, and we will have a new group of competent national security officials who believe in defending America's vital interests above all else," he concluded.

Ron DeSantis on Fox & Friends on 19 February 2023 rehearsed the main themes used by Republican opponents of aiding Ukraine. He described the Biden administration’s policy as a “blank check,” implying that his administration would restrict or end aide to Kyiv. (“Just saying it’s an open-ended blank check, that is not acceptable.”) He dismissed the notion that Russia posesda threat to American allies, interests, or values. (“It’s important to point out the fear of Russia going into NATO countries and all of that, and steamrolling that is not even coming close to happening. I think they’ve shown themselves to be a third-rate military power.”)

DeSantis blamed the invasion not on Vladimir Putin but on Joe Biden. (“I don’t think any of this would have happened, but for the weakness that the president showed during his first year in office, culminating, of course, in the disastrous withdrawal in Afghanistan.”)

And he used the fallacious conflation of Ukraine’s national sovereignty with immigration policy in the United States, creating an imagined choice between stricter enforcement of the southern border and helping Ukraine: “So I think while he’s over there, I think I, and many Americans, are thinking to ourselves, okay, ‘He’s very concerned about those borders halfway around the world. He’s not done anything to secure our own border here at home.’” We’ve had millions and millions of people pour in, tens of thousands of Americans dead because of fentanyl, and then, of course, we just suffered a national humiliation of having China fly a spy balloon clear across the continental United States. So, we have a lot of problems accumulating here in our own country that he is neglecting.”

Jonathan Chait noted "Vladimir Putin has built his strategy on the assumption that he can keep throwing conscripts into the trenches of eastern Ukraine longer than the United States is willing to keep sending money and arms to Kyiv. Putin’s main hope has rested on Donald Trump returning to office in 2025. Now he has a second option should Trump falter"

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) introduced the “Ukraine Fatigue” Resolution on 09 February 2023, continuing a recent push among a subset of Republican lawmakers who want to change course in Washington’s support for Ukraine. The resolution states that “the United States must end its military and financial aid to Ukraine, and urges all combatants to reach a peace agreement.” Initially, the resolution has ten co-sponsors: Reps. Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar R-Ariz.), Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), Mary Miller (R-Ill.), Barry Moore (R-Ala.), Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), and Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.)

Gaetz said in a statement “President Joe Biden must have forgotten his prediction from March 2022, suggesting that arming Ukraine with military equipment will escalate the conflict to ‘World War III.’ America is in a state of managed decline, and it will exacerbate if we continue to hemorrhage taxpayer dollars toward a foreign war. We must suspend all foreign aid for the War in Ukraine and demand that all combatants in this conflict reach a peace agreement immediately”.

Nikki Haley, former South Carolina governor and 2024 Republican presidential candidate, said 04 June 2023 helping Ukraine defend itself from Russian aggression is in the U.S. national interest, breaking with leading party candidates Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, who have voiced more ambiguous positions on the war. "This is bigger than Ukraine," Haley said. "This is a war about freedom, and it's one we have to win." Haley called Russian President Vladimir Putin a tyrant and refuted claims the conflict is purely a territorial dispute -- comments targeted at Trump's close relationship with Putin and DeSantis's initial comments about the war.

The United States must force Ukraine to make "serious concessions" to Russia in order to focus on confronting China. Republican presidential contender Vivek Ramaswami, who announced his participation in the 2024 presidential race in February, expressed this opinion on ABC television. "I think we need to end the fighting in Ukraine on peaceful terms, make serious concessions to Russia, including the freezing of controlled territories through a truce agreement similar to the one signed following the Korean War," Ramaswamy said. He also made a proposal not to accept Ukraine into NATO. Ramaswami noted that he does not consider Ukraine a foreign policy priority for the United States. In his opinion, the main threat to Washington is China, as well as the alliance between Beijing and Moscow. The politician stressed that the job of the US president is to "take care of American interests," and it is unprofitable for the United States "to be in conflict with two nuclear powers at the same time."