Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) slammed NBC News host Kristen Welker during an interview on Sunday after she deceptively framed a question.
The exchange happened on “Meet The Press” while the two were talking about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and what a Trump-Vance administration would do.
Welker pressed Vance to call Russian President Vladimir Putin an “enemy” instead of an “adversary”.
“Well, we’re not in a war with him, and I don’t want to be in a war with Vladimir Putin’s Russia,” he said. “I think that we should try to pursue avenues of peace.”
“We can recognize, obviously, that we have adversarial interests with Russia,” he continued. “We can condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and I have, and of course the president has. But we also need to engage in some smart diplomacy if we’re ever going to get out of the mess that Kamala Harris has left us in and get back to a posture of peace.”
Welker then falsely claimed that Russia invaded Ukraine under former President Donald Trump.
“And, of course, Donald Trump was president for four years while Russia was essentially invading Crimea,” she falsely claimed. “Why didn’t he kick him out when he had the chance? He had four years.”
Vance responded: “Oh, I think that that’s a misunderstanding of the history, Kristen. I look at that much differently.”
“Well, there was fighting going on,” she said.
“First of all, we had Russia invade another country, a sovereign nation, during Obama,” Vance correctly noted. “We had Russia invade a sovereign nation during Bush’s term. We had Russia invade a sovereign nation during the leadership of Kamala Harris.”
“The one four-year term where Russia did not launch a full-scale invasion against a neighbor was under the leadership of Donald Trump,” he noted. “We also have to remember, just on that point, if Donald Trump had not given Ukraine javelins, the country would not exist as an independent sovereign nation anymore. So, the idea that Donald Trump wasn’t sufficiently strong on Russia I think is belied by the actual history of the period.”
WATCH:
NBC’s Kristen Welker LIES about the Crimean invasion, which happened under Obama n 2014, in order to firefight “Putin didn’t invade anybody while trump was in office”. pic.twitter.com/uvq1TDQwM9
— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) October 27, 2024