As Russia’s War with Ukraine Rages, Trump Suggests China Will Invade Taiwan

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Last updated on July 18th, 2023 at 01:48 pm

Former President Donald Trump suggested that China will invade Taiwan, an event that policymakers have worried could happen should China, a key Russian ally, feel emboldened by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s move to invade Ukraine.

In an interview with Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, Trump said China will invade Taiwan because of “how stupid the United States is run,” in a direct dig at President Joe Biden.

“They’re seeing that our leaders are incompetent, and of course they’re going to do – this is their time.” he said, suggesting that Chinese President Xi Jinping is taking cues from the way the United States handled the evacuation of Afghanistan after the Taliban seized power last summer.

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“He [Biden] saw the way that we left Afghanistan like a surrender and left $85 billion and death behind and left American citizens there that are still trying to get out. And he sees that, and this is his opportunity to do what he wants to do, which is … he’s wanted to do that, and China’s wanted to do that for decades,” he later added.

President Biden has defended his administration’s response, saying that the U.S. mission in Afghanistan was never intended “to have been nation building,” insisting it had always been about “preventing a terrorist attack on American homeland” and “never supposed to be creating a unified centralized democracy.”

Trump’s administration had proposed leaving Afghanistan by January 15, 2021.

“By May, it is President Trump’s hope that they will all come home safely — and in their entirety,” then-national security adviser Robert O’Brien said at the time. “I want to reiterate that this policy is not new. This has been the president’s policy since he took office.”

Trump was largely supportive of an Afghanistan withdrawal. In April, he put himself at odds with other Republicans when he suggested that American troops should leave Afghanistan ahead of President Joe Biden’s proposed deadline of September 11. The evacuation was completed ahead of an August 31 deadline.