Former President Donald Trump called for peace negotiations to end the war between Russia and Ukraine and pledged he would quickly begin deporting illegal aliens if elected president while speaking at his first official campaign-trail event in South Carolina on Saturday night.

“Through weakness and incompetence, Joe Biden has brought us to the brink of World War III. We’re at the brink of World War III, just in case anyone doesn’t know it,” Trump said, flanked by Gov. Henry McMaster (R-SC) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), the chiefs of his campaign’s South Carolina leadership team. “As president, I will bring back peace through strength.”

Trump asserted that if he “was president, there would not have been a war with Russia and Ukraine; zero chance.”

Former President Donald Trump greets Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) (R) during a 2024 election campaign event in Columbia, South Carolina, on January 28, 2023. (LOGAN CYRUS/AFP via Getty Images)

He added that a peace deal is waiting to be struck between the countries:

And I will say this, even now despite tremendous loss of lives and the destruction of much of that country, I would have a peace deal negotiated within 24 hours. You could make a peace deal, you could make a deal for both right now, 24 hours. That deal could be done. That deal is waiting to be done but there’s nobody to do it.

A supporter of former President Donald Trump attends a campaign event at the South Carolina State House in Columbia, South Carolina, on Saturday, January 28, 2023. (Sam Wolfe/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Trump then referenced his policy plan to “build state-of-the-art, next-generation missile defense shields” to defend and “protect Americans from the threat of hypersonic missiles and nuclear weapons.” He previously detailed the plan with a campaign policy video released last week:

Earlier in his remarks, the 45th president called for the rapid deportation of illegal immigrants. Since President Joe Biden has been at the helm, some 4.2 million illegal immigrants have been apprehended along the southwest border, as Breitbart News reported.

“They’re coming from prisons, and they’re coming from mental institutions, and they’re coming from a lot of bad places that’s going to cause us a lot of problems,” said Trump, adding:

We have to get that straightened out and we have to get it straightened out fast, and we have to remove a lot of people very very fast because we can’t have what they’re sending. They’re sending people that are killers, murderers, they’re sending rapists, and they’re sending, frankly, terrorists or terrorists are coming on their own, and frankly we can’t allow this to happen. So the illegal border crossers are going to be sent straight back home. Those bad ones, especially, and they’re gonna go fast. 

Trump’s trip to South Carolina, the second primary state in the country, came hours after he delivered the keynote address at the New Hamshire Republican Party’s annual conference in Salem, New Hampshire. Trump pledged to preserve New Hampshire’s status as the first primary state in the nation “for many, many years to come” if elected president, as Breitbart News reported.