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

In a new “Sunday Special” interview, Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro spoke to Dan Bongino about who he thinks will win this year’s presidential election.

Shapiro started their hour-long discussion by asking Bongino to predict who will claim victory in November, President Biden or former President Donald Trump. Bongino is the host of “The Dan Bongino Show” on Rumble and a former Fox News host as well as a former NYPD and Secret Service officer.

“If you had to put money on it today, who do you think wins, Trump or Biden?” Shapiro asked.

“You know, listen, predictions kill me because it’s one of those things, like everybody’s got one. But unless you can back it up with some data, it’s kind of meaningless,” Bongino began.

“I think Donald Trump is going to win,” he said. “But there’s a reason. The coalition is completely different. And this is where I think everybody miscalculated.”

WATCH THE FULL ‘SUNDAY SPECIAL’ EPISODE WITH DAN BONGINO

Bongino said that in 2021 with the “crazy” news cycle and the Left’s “hysteria” around January 6 and other things, people thought about Trump, “This guy’s going to get smoked.” People believed suburban moms and independents would abandon Trump, Bongino said.

“And then this moment happened,” Bongino said.

“Now you see the raw data, the polling numbers. The Trump coalition’s just different. Hispanic voters, black voters, you’re seeing working class males in droves, and most importantly union workers. My brother’s a Local Three electrician. He doesn’t know a single person voting for Biden. When did the Republicans ever win the union vote?” he said.

“In my humble opinion, Ben, I think Trump’s lasting gift outside of the Supreme Court, the Abraham Accords, and other things, I really believe this, I think his real gift to the Republican Party is going to be that he completely altered the coalition moving forward,” Bongino said.

Shapiro noted that Obama’s 2012 victory was notable because he “basically decided to abandon the middle and run directly to his base.”

“The magic of Donald Trump in 2024, shockingly, is that he is the moderate candidate in this race,” Shapiro said. “If you look at him, positionally, Donald Trump has grabbed the middle on every single issue.”

“A hundred percent,” Bongino agreed, adding that, “it’s funny when people paint this guy as this far-right conservative dictator,” especially when his first term had “quite a moderate agenda.”

Bongino went on to note that some “old school” conservatives are sometimes bothered by Trump’s “transactional” political style, especially when it comes to hot-button issues like abortion.

“I always say, we can argue tax policy all we want, but if you’re dead, you’re not really paying taxes. So that’s like kind of my thing. Don’t whack babies,” Bongino said.

“But he’s transactional,” he said. “He looks at something and goes, ‘Okay, you want to save x number of babies. You’re not going to get that done in this state. So how about we do this?'”

“But then you’re like, he’s not wrong about the politics … Maybe the Republican Party needs more of a transactionalist,” Bongino said.

“You had asked in the beginning, can we keep this going, and the answer is, I’m not sure. I’m not sure we have this great bench of people who can blend this new populism with conservatism,” Bongino said.

Shapiro and Bongino also discussed the Biden campaign, Bongino noting that President Biden is not the same now as when he debated Paul Ryan in 2012. Biden is set to debate former President Donald Trump on June 27.

“He’s a different guy now. He’s got this anger issue. It’s a serious anger issue. He can’t seem to control himself anymore especially when his son is brought up,” Bongino said. “So I think what Trump should do, and I’ve said this repeatedly even to him is they need to bring props. I’m not talking about a big rubber ducky or anything. He needs to pull out a copy of that check, that $40,000 check and be like ‘Joe, it says Joe Biden, $40,000, where’d it come from, Joe? Explain.’ He’ll lose his mind.”

I think Biden agreeing to the debate was a really, really awful idea,” Bongino said.

“Every day he changes his mind because he’s too stupid to have a position,” Bongino said. “But the problem he’s going to have on the second point here is none of this is changeable. He’s only getting older. He obviously has some cognitive frontal lobe dementia if you just look at him. None of his policies are changeable. The economy is not going to turn around. The Middle East isn’t getting any better.”