On Monday's edition of CNN's "The Lead," anchor Jake Tapper tore apart former President Donald Trump's claim that the Russian invasion of Ukraine wouldn't have happened had he been elected to a second term.
"Former President Donald Trump and his allies have been engaging in quite a bit of revisionist history about this matter," said Tapper, playing a clip of Trump saying, "It is so sad. This would have never happened if we had the Trump administration. There was no chance this would happen. And I know [Vladimir Putin] well. And this was not something that was going to happen at all."
Tapper proceeded to spell out exactly why this claim is nonsense.
"Trump, of course, failing to mention his own actions and inactions, and that of his administration that may have enabled Putin in many ways, instead of calling out Russia's decades of invasion, in Georgia in 2008, annexing Crimea in 2014," said Tapper. "Trump in this day seems to find room to even praise Putin as a genius for the brutal attack. Even some of Trump's foreign advisers wonder if his approach may have empowered the Russian president on the world stage."
"Trump and his supporters today note that unlike during the administrations of Bush and Obama, Putin never invaded any country during the Trump years, which is true," Tapper continued — but, he said, one reason for that might be that Putin was anticipating Trump would pull the U.S. out of NATO, critically wounding the alliance and giving him a free opening to reclaim Eastern Europe. Highlighting the point, Tapper played clips of Trump calling NATO "obsolete".
Watch below: