Former President Donald Trump said the United States under President Joe Biden has lost the respect of other nations.
Trump made his remarks on the latest episode of “The Michael Savage Show” podcast, released Tuesday.
“The problem that we have is that we’re not respected as a country anymore,” Trump said.
“When I left [office] … we were respected by everybody and that includes China. I don’t think we’ve ever had a time in our country like this where we are so totally disrespected.”
Trump maintained the crisis in Ukraine never would have happened if he were in office.
“This would never have been on the table,” he said. “I had a very good relationship with [Russian President Vladimir Putin]. It was made much tougher because of the Russia hoax, which is now being exposed as bigger than Watergate. And the second biggest scandal is that the newspapers agree that it’s the biggest, but they refuse to write about it.
“What’s happened to this country is so bad and a lot of it has to do with the press. They refuse to write about it. Some are doing it big, but a lot of them refuse to write about it because they’re embarrassed and because they’re bad.
“The thing that is happening now is, I think, the Americans played right into [Putin’s] hands because they made it very severe and they gave him a lot of cards. Now, he’s got the cards and if they make a settlement, he’s going to make a hell of a settlement out of it.
“But what’s happened is that by talking of the severity, they’ve given him a lot more cards than he had at the beginning.”
He said special counsel John Durham’s findings, resulting from probing the origins of the FBI’s investigation into claims of Trump’s links to the Russian, is bigger than any revelations from the Watergate scandal.
“You see what came out: The whole thing was a hoax,” he said. “They were infiltrating the Oval Office. That would be punishable in the most stringent way. It’s a spying operation. And they took their spying operation into the oval office. And the press, I guess, is afraid or they’re just bad news or their communists and they don’t want to write about it. It’s bigger than Watergate.
“What could be worse than spying in the White House? What could be bigger? The fact that the press isn’t covering something much bigger that Watergate.”
He likened the media’s reluctance to covering the scandal.to communism.
“And that to me is the beginning of communism,” he said. “That’s how it all starts.”
He also took the opportunity to lash out against Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., again. He noted that he had helped McConnell win in Kentucky.
“He asked me to help him,” Trump said. “I helped him. I endorsed him. He went up 20 points. If I would have run somebody in Kentucky, they would have won in the primary. And I should have done it. You know some of these guys get elected and they go rogue. It’s one of those things.”
Trump was asked if he would consider Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., as a running mate, should he make another White House bid.
“We have a lot of very good people, who could be vice president. Really good people,” he said. “I endorsed Ron … after I endorsed him, he went up like a rocket ship. I’m very strongly vested and invested in him. He’s a good guy and he’s doing a good job. And we have others who are doing a great job.”