Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) defended former President Donald Trump’s position on Ukraine during an interview over the weekend, noting that the country is only invaded when Democrats are in the White House.
Cotton made the remarks during a Sunday interview with Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union” when asked about comments that Trump made at a rally where he noted that Ukraine seemingly never stops asking the U.S. for assistance in their war against Russia.
“I think it’s important to look at the context of what’s happened in Ukraine over the last 10 years,” Cotton said. “I have noticed that Vladimir Putin only invades Ukraine when Democrats are president. It happened under Barack Obama. It happened under Joe Biden. It didn’t happen with Donald Trump.”
“In fact, the weapons that Ukraine used in the early days of this war to fend off the Russian invasion are the weapons that Donald Trump sent, that Barack Obama and Joe Biden had refused to send,” he continued. “One reason why Joe Biden — or why Vladimir Putin thought he could get away with going for the jugular in Ukraine is because of the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, which projected weakness and indecision. It was just a few weeks later that he began to mass troops on Ukraine’s border.”
Cotton said that Trump supports Ukraine and wants them to win but he believes that Europe should “do more and, in fact, should care more, because it is in their backyard. It is on their borders. I think that too. Europe should be doing more of this.”
“I understand that European leaders and Democrats here in America didn’t care for some of the language or rhetoric he used,” he later added. “I would say that was necessary to get tough on foreign leaders who are our putative allies who had been free-riding off of American military strength for 35 years. And what you saw is European leaders actually finally investing in their common defense. That’s something they will do again when President Trump is back in the White House.”
WATCH:
The only time Putin invades Ukraine is when there is a Democratic president.
Joe Biden following Barack Obama’s example of weakness has unleashed chaos in the world and hurt America and our allies. pic.twitter.com/ZZpW3DIpBJ
— Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) June 16, 2024
