Trump, injured in an assassination attempt, unveils a surprise plan to end the Russia-Ukraine war and revive missile defence in his RNC speech on September 4, 2024.
The 78-year-old Trump boasted about the goal of restarting the Cold War-era missile defense plan promising that the world was ‘teetering on the precipice of the third world war,’ Trump said while rubbing his red right ear, which was bandaged up as the FBI described the attack as an assassination attempt.
“War is now in Europe and the Middle East and this administration can’t begin to address those issues,” Trump charged in a 92-minute speech to end the four-day convention in Milwaukee, a crucial swing state in the November 5 election. The Republican nominated to challenge Biden in 2024 accused the Democrats’ incumbent of provoking Putin into entering Ukraine by pulling out of Afghanistan in disarray.
Hans Noel, a political scientist with Georgetown University’s Department of Government, told RFE/RL that Trump’s speech brought “nothing new” to his foreign policy outlook and that his view on supporting Ukraine’s defence against the Russian invasion opposed the Democrats.
I think the thing that came through the most is just the different framing of the war in Ukraine,” Noel said. “It’s not framed as Russia invaded Ukraine and Ukraine would like our help to defend itself, but rather that Ukraine and Russia got themselves into a war, and maybe we don’t want to get involved ourselves.”
Trump depicted his four years in office as one of relative international peace and stability with rivals Russia and China at bay. The Republican nominee boasted that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban even said that Russia and China were “afraid of him.” After visiting Moscow and Beijing, Orban flew to Florida to discuss the war in Ukraine with Trump on July 11.
Trump also stated that he also would release U. S. “hostages” without any further elaboration as to who and how this would be done.
The comments seemed to refer to the dozens of Americans held abroad on trumped-up charges, several of them in Russia, including Alsu Kurmasheva, a veteran RFE/RL journalist holding dual U.S.-Russian citizenship. The broadcaster said charges against Kurmasheva are reprisals for her work as a journalist.
The Biden administration, in the last three years, managed to free many Americans held abroad through prisoner swaps and other means. Trump said that, if elected, he would revive former President Ronald Reagan’s plans for a space-based missile defence system to protect the United States from the threat of long-range nuclear missiles. China and Russia have been developing their long-range conventional and nuclear weapons.
Trump added that advances in technology made it viable. In the 1990s, the U.S. shelved the program, which critics of Reagan had dubbed “Star Wars,” as the Cold War drew to a close and Washington and Moscow worked on improving ties. Trump’s rebound from the assassination attempt comes as Biden, whose coronavirus infection knocked him off the campaign trail for about a week, faces growing calls from within his party to withdraw from the race.
Trump mentioned Biden only once in the speech amid a rash of news reports that the president could drop out of the race as early as this weekend. He then positioned himself as the biggest victim of the divisive political rhetoric, accusing the Democratic party of “weaponizing the justice system” against him and his family.
Trump also spent extensive time in his speech outlining his domestic policy plans if elected. He vowed to lessen immigration, nullify electric vehicle mandates, raise U.S. oil and gas production, and cut taxes.
