For Trump and DeSantis, the invasion is not a “vital national interest” of the US

The two main candidates for the Republican nomination for the 2024 election. Ron DeSantis and former president Donald Trumpthey talked about what could be one of the hottest issues of the election campaign: the war in Ukraine.

They did it through Tucker Carlson, the star host of the conservative Fox News network, who on his program on Monday nights read the answers of various Republican politicians to a questionnaire that included a question about Ukraine.

“USA. there are many vital national interests (Secure our borders, tackle our military’s readiness crisis, achieve energy security and independence, and keep the Chinese Communist Party’s economic, cultural, and military power in check). Stronger involvement in the territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them.», DeSantis detailed in his response.

The candidate also linked engagement in Ukraine with the Biden administration’s neglect of domestic politics. The United States “cannot prioritize intervention in a foreign war over the defense of the homeland,” a homeland where, according to Florida’s governor, “tens of thousands of Americans” die annually from drugs coming in through an “open border” and has a stockpile of weapons that are “rapidly depleting empty”.

To Carlson’s question, Trump replied that he is in favor of peace negotiations with Russia even if it means that Ukraine gives up part of its territory. For the former president, opposition to Russia is not a vital national interest of the United States: «It is for Europe […] which is why they should pay a lot more than us, or the same.

Also, in Iowa, Trump said he did “the only candidate” capable of preventing the “third world war”. A world war that would come as a result of the conflict in Ukraine and which, according to him, will be a nuclear war. “It’s not like World War II, where we have tanks and guns and we’re chasing each other. This is the level that will probably end the world. And we have people who don’t know what they’re doing.”