Former President Donald Trump said during Tuesday night’s ABC News debate that the Russia-Ukraine war is “dying to be settled” and he wants to end it to “save lives.”
Moderator David Muir asked Trump if he wanted Ukraine to win the war.
“I want the war to stop. I want to save lives,” Trump said. “People being killed by the millions. It’s the millions. It’s so much worse than the numbers that you’re getting, which are fake numbers.”
Trump said the United States is bearing too much of the brunt of funding the war, and that European NATO allies need to step up their contributions. He blasted Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden for lacking the “courage” to ask NATO allies to contribute more:
Look, we’re in for $250 billion or more because [Biden and Harris] don’t ask Europe, which is a much bigger beneficiary to getting this thing done than we are, they’re in for $150 billion less because Biden and you don’t have the courage to ask Europe like I did with NATO. They paid billions and billions, hundreds of billions of dollars when I said, ‘Either you pay up or we’re not going to protect you anymore.’ So that’s maybe one of the reasons they don’t like me as much as they like weak people.
But you take a look at what’s happening. We’re in for $250 [billion] to $275 billion. They’re into $100 [billion] to $150 [billion] they should be forced to equalize. With that being said, I want to get the war settled.
Trump highlighted that he has relationships with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and he would talk with both men separately and then together to reach a deal.
“That is a war that’s dying to be settled,” Trump said. “I will get it settled before I even become president if I win, when I’m president-elect. And what I’ll do is I’ll speak to one, I’ll speak to the other. I’ll get them together. That war would have never happened.”