U.S. President Donald Trump gives a thumbs up as he returns to the White House from National Harbor following his address to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) annual meeting, on the South Lawn in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 22, 2025. REUTERS/Craig Hudson
President Donald Trump’s sudden shift on Ukraine is a “shocking” development that rattled allies and left the United States in a weakened state on the global stage.
That’s according to Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), who sounded the alarm in a CNN interview on Monday over the increasingly erratic moves Trump has made since returning to the White House – which was ratcheted up with the administration’s opposition to a United Nations resolution condemning Russian aggression against Ukraine.
“You know that after 80 years, in a few days, Donald Trump just blew up the Western Alliance, I mean completely,” Kelly told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “Even after this first month of this administration, I'm still kind of shocked by what happened over the last, you know, several days.”
He added: “And make no mistake Anderson, this makes our country look weak and we are less safe because of it.”
While Kelly focused most of his criticism Monday on Trump, the former astronaut saved some strong words for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for his remarks over the weekend calling the Russia-Ukraine situation “complicated.”
“It’s not complicated it's very clear who the aggressor is, it's clear who the war criminal is,” Kelly said bluntly. But he quickly circled back to Trump.
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“I think he knows where he wants to be – he wants to be aligned with Putin – he seems to be drawn to dictators and this is dangerous for our country and it just makes us look incredibly weak,” Kelly said.
The Arizona lawmaker went on to call the unfolding war “a disaster for our own safety and our national security.”
“If we get into the habit of aligning with violent dictators who you know were not elected into office, people like Vladimir Putin, yeah I mean it has put us in a, you know, situation that we haven't been in in nearly a century," he said.
Kelly then seized the opportunity to take a shot at the Trump administration using the president’s own 1987 bestselling book, “Trump: The Art of the Deal.”
“They're in a negotiation, right at the start of the negotiation they give up the two biggest negotiating points: NATO membership and Ukrainian land,” Kelly said. “I mean Anderson, anybody who knows – I mean I thought the president was supposed to be good at making a deal – this is like the art of the bad deal.”
Watch the clip below or at this link: