Donald Trump refused to say he supported Ukraine to win its bloody war with Russia as he appeared on a controversial live CNN town hall.
The one-term president was repeatedly asked by host Kaitlan Collins if he backed Ukraine in its 15-month conflict with Vladimir Putin’s forces, and repeatedly dodged the question.
“I don’t think in terms of winning and losing, I think in terms of getting it settled so we stop killing all these people and breaking down this country,” he told Collins when asked about his support for Ukraine.
She then asked him again if he wanted Ukraine or Russia to win the conflict.
“I want everyone to stop dying. They are dying, Russians and Ukrainians. I want them to stop dying,” he replied.
Mr Trump also repeated his claim it would take him one day in the Oval Office to end the conflict.
“I’ll have that done in 24 hours, you need the power of the presidency to do it.” And he added: You know what, I will say this, I want Europe to put up more money. They should equalise, they have plenty of money.”
And he boasted that the conflict would never even have happened if he had remained in office.
“If I were president this never would have happened and even the Democrats recognise that. Putin knew it would never have happened and his pipeline would never have happened, a lot of things would never have happened,” he said.
“All those dead people, both Russian and Ukrainian, would not be dead today, and all those cities that are blown up and disintegrated to the ground would not have happened.”
Mr Trump also tried to claim that he had “a very good relationship” with the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.
Mr Trump was impeached for the first time over a call in which he tried to get Mr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden in return for weapons.
“I have a very good relationship with President Zelensky because as you know he backed me up with phoney impeachment hoax number one when he said the president did nothing wrong. I was totally exonerated by the way a total waste of time and money,” said Mr Trump and Collins reminded viewers that the former president had been impeached by Congress.