(TotalConservative.com) – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis appeared on “Piers Morgan Uncensored” on Thursday and claims his remarks earlier this month on the war in Ukraine were “mischaracterized.”
A few weeks ago, Tucker Carlson gave out a foreign policy questionnaire to Republican candidates running in the 2024 presidential election as well as potential candidates like DeSantis. He posted DeSantis’ full response to the Ukraine question on Twitter, which seemed to echo former President Donald Trump’s position, and received some pushback from former Vice President Mike Pence.
DeSantis said “becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia” should not be among our “vital national interests,” but the focus should instead be on “securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness within our military, achieving energy security and independence,” and keeping China in check.
He also criticized President Joe Biden’s “blank check” policy of funding the conflict and warned that although “peace should be the objective,” becoming further involved could lead to nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia.
Clarifying his comments on Thursday, DeSantis told Morgan that he thinks “it’s been mischaracterized.” He called the Russian invasion of Ukraine “wrong” as well as what happened in Crimea in 2014.
“What I’m referring to,” he said, “is kinda where the fighting is going on now, which is that western border or eastern border reaching Donbas and then Crimea.” He explained that when he called it a “territorial dispute” he was referring to this “conflict area” rather than saying Russia had a right to it, calling Vladimir Putin a “war criminal.”
The Florida governor still held his ground on his position that there’s no “sufficient interest for us to escalate more involvement” and doesn’t want to see American troops sent over. He also clarified that if he could snap his fingers, he’d give the territory “back to Ukraine 100 percent.”
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