US president Donald Trump once attempted to scare Vladimir Putin off from launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Per CNN, audio recordings taken at a 2024 fundraiser reveal Trump’s impotent brag in front of a private gathering, despite the Russian leader providing an ice-cold response at the time of their standoff.
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“With Putin I said, ‘If you go into Ukraine, I’m going to bomb the sh*t out of Moscow. I’m telling you I have no choice,'” he told attendees.
“And then [Putin] goes, like, ‘I don’t believe you.’ But he believed me 10%.”
Yeah, what a fat load of good that did in the end…
Trump even made a similar threat to China’s president Xi Jinping regarding plans to invade Taiwan.
“He thought I was crazy,” he said, before going on to claim “we never had a problem”.
Elsewhere in the tapes, the 79-year-old argued that he would have de-escalated the Ukrainian and Gaza conflicts if he’d been in the White House when Joe Biden was.
Outside of the warring nations conversation, Trump boasted about forcing his wealthy allies to donate millions of dollars to his presidential campaign, whilst also covering his administration’s planned efforts to deport pro-Palestinian protestors on college campuses.
“One thing I’d do is any student that protests, I would throw them out of the country. Those people made a big mistake,” he warned. “Throw them out of the country, and I think that will stop it.”
This comes in light of Trump’s recent Nobel Peace Prize nomination, which is awarded to someone who does the most for “fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses”, according to organisers.