The former president Donald Trump warned on Tuesday that World War III could break out over Ukraine or Taiwan, saying that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threat to unleash nuclear weapons made this “a moment very bad and very dangerous”.
During an interview on the radio station 77 WABC, host John Catsimatidis asked Trump what things “keep him up at night”.
“I think more than anything else, I think we could end up in a World War III and it could be all the horrible things that happened in the Ukraine”, he said.
“It looks like it’s going to happen in China with Taiwan, as you know, and you see what’s happening there.”
Trump also alluded to Putin’s speech last week on the Russian leader he promised to “use all the means at his disposal to protect Russia and its people.
“I think we are in the most dangerous moment, perhaps s in many, many years, maybe never, because of nuclear power,” Trump said.
“For an important nation that like us has nuclear power, throwing the word with nonchalance, like nuclear, is a very bad time. A very bad time for this country and a very bad and very dangerous time for the world.”
Trump also agreed with Catsimatidis’s suggestion that, if he were still president, Putin he would not have invaded Ukraine earlier this year.
“I got on very well with him. I spoke with him. I got it,” Trump said of the Russian leader. “He understood me, probably. But I got it right, and he never would have.”
Without mentioning President Biden by name during the 20 minute pre-recorded interview, Trump also criticized the failed US withdrawal from Afghanistan last year passed before launching a series of attacks.
“A lot of things don’t make sense”, he said.
“Inflation doesn’t make sense. Totally unnecessary. That was caused by oil. That was caused by energy prices. Now it is caused by everything. Now it is beyond that.”
Trump also said that “open borders are meaningless”, and he added: “We have millions of people arriving in our country”.
“We have no idea where they are from and many of them come from prisons in many other countries”, he said.
“They are prisoners and they are hardened and dangerous people”.
After Catsimatidis brought up the subject of fentanyl, which helped fuel a record of 107,622 overdose deaths in 2021, Trump said: “I think what happened is that the number is much higher than that.”
“I think they are 250,000”, he said.
“And that does not include all the families that are totally destroyed due to the drugs that enter through the southern border”.
Trump added that “the only way to stop it is with the death penalty for drug dealers.”
“If you look at the countries where they have, like China, they have the death penalty, they don’t have problems with drugs”, he said.
“Singapore has the death penalty. They have no problem with drugs. You will never get off drugs unless you have the death penalty.”
Trump also said that the city of New York “is not the same place” it was due to rising crime and he said people “are afraid to go to a restaurant. Women are afraid to wear jewelry because it will be stolen from their necks”.
“I have so many friends who don’t want to go there anymore. And they leave New York”, he told Catsimatidis, billionaire owner of the Gristedes supermarket chain.
“You are saying that you are one of the people who stay, but people goes from New York by the tens of thousands. And there are a lot of wealthy people who leave New York and they are the ones who provide the money so that it can work”.
At another point, Trump said he hoped “there will be a time when we can be proud instead of just talking about how bad things are.”
“But our country he has never been in a worse position than he is now. And just look at the stock market”, he said.
“Tell your listeners to take a good look at their 250K, that in some cases they are 50% lower than they were two years ago. So, you know, it’s very sad to see what’s happening to our country.”
Trump also lashed out against State Attorney General Letitia James, who last week filed a $250 million dollar civil fraud lawsuit against him and his three eldest children, calling it “ disaster” and blaming her for the rise in crime across the state.
“She spends years hounding me that she said, oh, maybe I misrepresented the banks, which, frankly, I didn’t ”, he said.
“And meanwhile, we have killers coming down, walking down the street. It’s just awful. She is a horror show. She is so bad. She doesn’t care about violent crimes. She doesn’t care about anything except trying to use Trump’s name to get elected.”