In a July 2016 interview, George Stephanopoulos asked Donald Trump why he favored the removal of a provision from the Republican Party Platform that called for providing Ukraine with defensive military weapons. This proposed modification of the platform was widely viewed as a concession to Russia, which, for several years, had become increasingly aggressive toward its former satellite states in Eastern Europe. Regarding the threat that Russia posed to Ukraine, Trump assured Stephanopoulos that Putin had no intention of invading
“He’s not going to go into Ukraine, all right? You can mark it down. You can put it down. You can take it anywhere you want.”
When Stephanopoulos pointed out that it was already a fait accompli — that Crimea had been occupied by the Russian military for the previous two years — Trump’s word salad response was fascinating
“OK – well, he’s there in a certain way. But I’m not there. You have Obama there. And frankly, that whole part of the world is a mess under Obama with all the strength that you’re talking about and all of the power of NATO and all of this. In the meantime, he’s going away. He takes Crimea.”
Incoherent speech is a sign of an incoherent mind. I doubt that anyone could make sense of such a nonsensical jumble of words, and I am confident that even Donald Trump himself had no idea what he was saying. It was, of course, what we have since come to recognize as typical Trumpian gibberish.
To put this remark into context, at that time, the Russian occupation of the Crimean Peninsula in southern Ukraine had dominated the geopolitical landscape, and much of the nightly news, for the previous two years, with Russia suffering diplomatic isolation, economic sanctions and expulsion from the G8 international coalition as consequences. The Obama Administration regarded the invasion and occupation of Crimea as a major crisis and a significant foreign policy challenge. In contrast, Donald Trump was entirely oblivious to the situation.
When it comes to global affairs, Donald Trump is about as informed as a five-year-old.
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