As President Joe Biden and his administration warn the world of a Russian invasion of Ukraine “at any time,” critics, including former President Donald Trump, claim that the only reason the situation is near the breaking point is due to Biden’s failed leadership.

According to Fox News, in a Saturday interview with Fox & Friends, the former president insisted that Biden’s “incompetent” handling of the U.S. troop withdrawal in Afghanistan last summer has “emboldened” world leaders like Vladimir Putin to take greater risks. 

“First of all, it’s shocking because it should have never happened, it would not have happened,” Trump said.

The former president, in usual form, didn’t pull any punches in his scathing criticism of how Biden botched the Afghanistan situation.

They’re watching

Trump emphasized that world leaders like Putin and even Chinese President Xi Jinping have essentially sat back and taken notes as they watch the Biden administration drop the ball on virtually every domestic and foreign policy crisis they’ve faced.

He went on to warn that while the Russian invasion scenario is bad enough, there’s also now a prime opportunity for China to take what it has wanted for a long time: Taiwan.

“How we got here is when they watched Afghanistan, and they watched the most incompetent withdrawal in the history of probably any army let alone just us, and President Xi [Jinping] and President Putin – watch what happens with China very soon with Taiwan – and they watched that, and they said: ‘What’s going on? They don’t know what they’re doing.’ And all of a sudden I think they got a lot more ambitious.”

Trump added: “I think Putin really wanted to negotiate for a period of time, but when he watched Afghanistan when he watched that unbelievably bad withdrawal, incompetent, where they took the Military out first.”

“Where they left $85 billion worth of equipment behind for the Taliban to have and to use and of course the deaths that happened – when they watched all of that I think they got emboldened,” Trump continued.

The latest threat

As Fox noted in a separate report, there have been a number of last-minute, hail-mary-level diplomatic talks between the U.S., Russia, Ukraine, and other countries in efforts to deescalate the situation before a doomsday scenario unfolds.

The talks, so far, haven’t seemed to result in any decisions one way or another, and the U.S. State Department continues to encourage Americans in Ukraine to evacuate, if possible, before transportation lines shut down if a war breaks out.

Only time will tell how this debacle ends, if it even begins, but if it does, all eyes will undoubtedly be on the American response, which is a scary prospect given who’s in charge.