WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday condemned President Joe Biden’s decision to send cluster munitions as part of a new U.S. aid program to Ukraine, warning that it could lead to the third world war.
Trump shared his position in a lengthy statement his campaign released five days after the Department of Defense officially announced the decision and a day after his former Vice President Mike Pence, now a rival for the GOP presidential nomination , has expressed its support for this decision.
“Joe Biden should not be dragging us further into World War III by sending cluster munitions to Ukraine – he should be trying to END the war and stop the horrific death and destruction caused by an incompetent administration” , Trump said.
Trump repeated the argument made by many critics – including those on the left – that unexploded cluster munitions “will kill and maim innocent Ukrainian men, women and children for decades, long after the war “.
Trump then attacked Biden for saying in an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria over the weekend that the United States sent the ammunition because the United States itself was running out of ammunition.
“The Ukrainians are running out of ammunition. … This is a war about ammunition, and they are running out of that ammunition, and we are running out of it,” Biden said.
“A big breach of classified information,” said Trump, who was charged last month with 37 federal charges related to more than 100 classified documents recovered from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida last year. last.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday on whether Biden shared classified information publicly.
“It certainly means we shouldn’t be sending our last stocks to Ukraine at a time when our own arsenals, according to Crooked Joe Biden, are so dangerously depleted,” Trump said.
He added that Biden’s “humiliating admission that the United States is now out of ammunition” is “something our enemies are no doubt salivating about.”
Trump made the same claim about stocks during a 2019 White House press conference with the Italian president. He said at the time that the United States had no ammunition when he took office.
“When I took over, it was a mess,” Trump said. “One of our generals came to me and said, ‘Sir, we don’t have ammunition.’ I said, ‘That’s a terrible thing you just said.’ He said, ‘We don’t have ammunition.’ Now we have more ammunition than we have ever had.”
Trump concluded his statement on Tuesday by saying there must be an immediate end to “the bloodshed in Ukraine” and a “return to a focus on America’s vital interests.”
He offered no alternative solution that he would have acted on if he were president now.
Since the invasion of Russia in February 2022, Trump has repeatedly refused to commit to publicly pledging his support for Ukraine. In May, he repeatedly deviated during a CNN town hall when asked if he would supply arms and equipment to Ukraine as president.
He also claimed that the war would never have happened under his leadership and that he could broker an agreement between Russia and Ukraine within 24 hours.
Meanwhile, NBC News on Monday asked most of the 2024 GOP presidential campaigns for comment to gauge where other candidates stand on the ammunition issue.
Only former UN ambassador Nikki Haley responded; she said she supported the decision.
This article originally appeared on NBCNews.com