During an interview with David Sacks in the podcast All In, former President Donald Trump blamed President Biden and Washington’s NATO expansion policy as an unwise and needless provocation that caused the war in Ukraine. Trump said, “For 20 years, I heard that if Ukraine goes into NATO, it’s a real problem for Russia. I’ve heard that for a long time. And I think that’s really why this war started.” Trump continued: “Biden was saying all of the wrong things. And one of the wrong things he was saying [was] ‘no, Ukraine will go into NATO.’”
Sacks interjected that around January 2022, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken told the Russians that Ukraine should join NATO and that Washington thought that it was OK to station nuclear weapons on Ukrainian soil. “So no wonder the Russians hit the roof,” Sacks said.
Trump responded, “Well, let’s say you were running Russia. You wouldn’t be too happy, and that’s always been off the table,” referring to NATO membership for Ukraine. Trump added: “It has always been understood that that was a no-no.” Trump said that simply floating the idea of NATO membership for Ukraine was “very provocative, and now even more provocative … and now I hear that France wants to go in and fight. Well, I wish them a lot of luck.”
