MONITORING (SW) – About 20 minutes into his highly anticipated speech at America’s largest annual conservative gathering, Donald Trump praised Russian President Vladimir Putin while denouncing his attack on Ukraine as a “catastrophic disaster”.
As Ukraine resisted Russia’s military advances for a third day, Trump appeared on stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Florida, where he revved up his base ahead of November’s midterm elections, hinted again at another presidential run and blamed Joe Biden for the Ukraine crisis, reported the SMH.
The former president praised Putin as “smart” and added that the world would not be on the cusp of another lengthy war if he had not lost the US election in 2020.
“The problem is not that he’s smart — which of course he’s smart — but the real problem is that our leaders are dumb. Putin is playing Biden like a drum… It’s not a pretty thing to watch,” Trump said.
“Russia’s attack on Ukraine is appalling. It’s an outrage, and an atrocity that should never have been allowed to occur. We are praying for the proud people of Ukraine. God bless them all.”
In a press conference with right-wing cable shortly before his address, Trump went even further, saying: “thousand of people, hundreds of thousands of people could die… and this could spread to other countries, and it could spread throughout the world. This could be a world war. Something has to be done.”
More than 12 months after leaving office, Trump is still the most dominant force among the Republican Party’s base.
Billed as “the largest and most influential gathering of conservatives in the world”, the conference has traditionally been a good insight into the state of conservatism within the Republican party.
Trump’s speech set the scene for a fiery contest ahead of this year’s midterm elections. In an address lasting almost 90 minutes, he once again revived false claims that the election was rigged, declared the COVID emergency was over and told the crowd that losing the 2022 midterms and the 2024 presidential election was “not an option”.
An apartment building in Kyiv subject to a missile attack on Saturday morning as UNHCR says 150,000 have fled Ukraine.
ENDS
