- This week, Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that he can solve the Ukraine war in 24 hours.
- Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he has no idea what Trump is talking about.
- Pompeo may be one of Trump’s challengers for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.
Mike Pompeo on Tuesday threw cold water on former President Donald Trump’s claim that he, if re-elected president, can solve the Ukraine war in 24 hours.
“I don’t know what he’s talking about,” the former Trump-era secretary of state told Fox News host Martha MacCallum.
Pompeo’s comment came after Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Monday that if re-elected president, he’d use his relationships with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian leader Vladimir Putin to orchestrate a “very easy negotiation” for peace.
“And there’s a very easy negotiation to take place. But I don’t want to tell you what it is because then I can’t use that negotiation. It’ll never work. But it’s a very easy negotiation to take place,” Trump said. “I will have it solved within one day, a peace between them.”
“So you’d prefer if you were president, you think you would have a negotiated settlement?” Hannity asked Trump.
“Within 24 hours,” Trump said.
While Pompeo on Tuesday dismissed Trump’s claim, he focused his remarks on praising his own achievements in dealing with the Kremlin.
“Putin takes a fifth of Ukraine under President Obama, not an inch while I was secretary of state, and then goes at it again once we leave,” Pompeo told MacCallum.
Pompeo is currently preparing for a 2024 presidential run against Trump, per Axios. He also took swipes at Trump at the Conservative Political Action Conference in March, and in his memoir.
—Mike Pompeo (@mikepompeo) March 29, 2023
Meanwhile, Trump has kept saying it will take him just one day to solve the war in Ukraine.
“It wouldn’t even be tough, I know what to say to each of ’em,” Trump said during a phone call to the conservative TV channel Real America’s Voice, referring once again to Putin and Zelenskyy.
He made the same claim at his Saturday rally in Waco, Texas, where he declared he’s currently the only presidential candidate who could promise to “prevent World War III.”
Trump has not provided any concrete substantiation on how he would end a conflict in 24 hours.
In March, he said on Fox News that he “could’ve made a deal” for Russia to take over “certain areas that are Russian-speaking areas” in Ukraine. The international community has condemned Russia’s annexation of Ukrainian territory. Zelenskyy also said in July that Ukraine will not cede territory to negotiate a ceasefire with Russia.
In March 2022, a month after the war kicked off, Trump also proposed a plan to try to end the war that involved pressuring Putin with US nuclear submarines — a suggestion that ran counter to all of the US’s efforts to avoid direct military intervention in the war.
“And we say, ‘Oh, he’s a nuclear power.’ But we’re a greater nuclear power. We have the greatest submarines in the world, the most powerful machines ever built,” Trump told the host Stuart Varney during an appearance on Fox Business,
“You should say, ‘Look, you mention that word one more time, we’re going to send them over and we’ll be coasting back and forth, up and down your coast,” Trump said. “You can’t let this tragedy continue. You can’t let these, these thousands of people die.”
Representatives for Pompeo and Trump did not immediately respond to Insider’s requests for comment outside regular business hours.
