Former President Donald Trump said in a video Thursday that the biggest threat to the US is not Russia, but rather Americans who hate their own country, including “godless” Marxists who promote progressive ideology.
“Our foreign policy establishment continues to try to bring the world into conflict with a nuclear-armed Russia, based on the lie that Russia represents our greatest threat.” Trump said in a video first posted on his Truth Social account. “But the greatest threat to Western civilization today is not Russia. It’s probably more than anything, ourselves and some of the horrible, US-hating people who represent us.”
Trump, who announced his 2024 presidential campaign in November, further suggested that the US fosters a culture and policies that lead to the country’s demise.
Former President Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference at the Hilton Anatole in Dallas on August 6, 2022. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
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“It’s the abolition of our national borders. It’s the failure to guard our own cities. It’s the destruction of the rule of law from within. It’s the collapse of the nuclear family and fertility rates as no one can believe,” Trump said . .
“It’s the Marxists who want us to become a godless nation, worshiping at the altar of race and gender and environment,” he continued. “And it is the globalist class that has made us completely dependent on China and other foreign countries that basically hate us.”
Trump’s comments came in a three-and-a-half-minute video in which he outlined why he felt the conflict between Russia and Ukraine should end “immediately” to avoid “World War III” and “nuclear Armageddon.”
The former president did not specify what a cessation of hostilities would look like in Ukraine, which Russia invaded in February 2022, but said new leadership in Washington is needed to bring about peace, avert global catastrophe and transform current power structures. to “dismantle”. .
The Ukrainian Army’s Grad multiple rocket launcher fires missiles at Russian front-line positions near Bakhmut, Donetsk region, Ukraine, on Nov. 24, 2022. (AP Photo/LIBKOS, File)
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“There must also be a complete commitment to dismantling the entire globalist, neo-conservative establishment that constantly drags us into endless wars, pretending to fight for freedom and democracy abroad, while turning us into a third world country and a third world dictatorship. home,” Trump said, adding that NATO’s role needs to be reexamined and the State Department, “defense bureaucracy” and intelligence agencies need to be reviewed.
“These globalists want to waste all of America’s strength, blood and treasure, chasing monsters and phantoms overseas, while distracting us from the havoc they are wreaking here at home,” he said. “These forces are doing more damage to America than Russia and China could have ever imagined.”
Trump’s video comes days after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has not announced a presidential bid but is widely seen as Trump’s biggest rival in 2024, made headlines for claiming that continuing to support Ukraine against the Russian invasion is not a “vital” US national interest.
Olivia Troye, an ex-advisor of former Vice President Mike Pence, denounced Trump’s video as a “gruesome pro-Putin messageand called on Republicans to sanction it.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis addresses Iowa voters in Des Moines on March 10, 2023. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
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The war in Ukraine has become a contentious issue dividing the burgeoning Republican 2024 presidential nomination field. Pence, a potential presidential candidate, said on Thursday it’s “healthy” to have a lot of debate within the GOP, but stressed that the conflict “isn’t a territorial dispute, it’s a Russian invasion.”
Nikki Haley, the former US ambassador to the United Nations — who, like Pence, also served under Trump — criticized both DeSantis and her former boss for their views on the Russia-Ukraine war.
“The Russian government is a powerful dictatorship that makes no secret of its hatred of America,” Haley said in a recent statement. “Unlike other anti-American regimes, it brutally attempts to expand by force into a neighboring pro-American country. It also regularly threatens other American allies.”
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“America is much better off with a Ukrainian victory than a Russian victory, including avoiding a wider war,” continued Haley, who officially contested the 2024 GOP presidential primaries last month. “If Russia wins, there is no reason to believe it will stop at Ukraine. And if Russia wins, its closest allies, China and Iran, will become more aggressive.”
Trump, who has called on Europe to pay as much if not more than the US to support Ukraine, ended his video Thursday by saying he is the only one capable of ousting the “sick and corrupt establishment”.
Aaron Kliegman is a political reporter for Fox News Digital.