About a month ago, a reporter asked Donald Trump what he’d do about the crisis in Ukraine if he were still in office. The Republican said there were “things” President Joe Biden could do, but Trump added that it wouldn’t be “appropriate” to share such ideas publicly. As regular readers may recall, the former president added, however, that he believes these “things” would end the crisis “pretty quickly.”
In other words, Trump had some kind of plan in mind to resolve Russia’s war in Ukraine, but it was a secret plan.
Now that he’s shared some additional details, it seems he would’ve been better off keeping his vision under wraps.
As we discussed a few weeks ago, the former president told a group of GOP donors about one of his more creative ideas: Trump said the United States should put Chinese flags on our F-22 fighter jets in order to “bomb the s*** out of Russia.” This was not smart.
It was against this backdrop that Fox Business’ Stuart Varney asked the Republican again yesterday for what he’d do if he were still president. Trump’s initial response wasn’t exactly clarifying.
“Well, what I would do, is I would — we would — we have tremendous military capability and what we can do without planes, to be honest with you, without 44-year-old jets, what we can do is enormous. And we should be doing it and we should be helping them to survive and they’re doing an amazing job.”
What did this mean? I’m honestly not sure, and neither was the Fox Business host. So, Varney asked again, and it led to this remarkable answer:
“I listen to [Vladimir Putin] constantly using the n word. That’s the n word, and he’s constantly using it: the nuclear word. And we never talk of, we say, ‘Oh, he’s a nuclear power.’ But we’re a greater nuclear power. We have the greatest submarines in the world, most powerful machines ever built. Most powerful, and they got built under me. Most powerful machines ever built, and nobody knows where they are. And you should say, ‘Look, if you mention that word one more time, we’re going to send them over, and we’ll be coasting back and forth up and down your coast.’”
Just a few months into his term, Trump had a chat with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte in which the Republican shared information about dispatching two nuclear submarines off the coast of the Korean peninsula. By one account, Pentagon officials were “in shock“ over the Republican’s willingness to share such information.
“We never talk about subs!” officials told BuzzFeed News.
Five years later, Trump is still talking about the subs. In case this isn’t obvious, the former president’s rhetoric yesterday was no better than his idea about putting Chinese flags on our fighter jets. For one thing, implicitly threatening a nuclear confrontation with an erratic Russian leader who’s struggling to win a deadly war is insanely dangerous. For another, Trump would apparently threaten Putin by telling him roughly where our nuclear submarines are, and that’s not smart either. As for why any of this matters, The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent recently made a point that resonated: “If Trump runs for president again and wins, he’ll be charting relations with Russia, NATO and Ukraine in the aftermath of this war, possibly while Putin’s conquest expands, or possibly while Ukrainians fight a brutal resistance against Russian occupation. Trump’s new interview … shows what a disaster that could prove.” In context, Greg was referring to a different Fox interview in which Trump suggested Biden should threaten Moscow with nuclear obliteration, but the larger point remains the same: The former president doesn’t seem to have any idea what he’s talking about, and the more he shares his ideas about resolving the ongoing crisis, the more ridiculous his rhetoric appears.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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