“I mean, he took a very tough stance against Russia. I'm surprised you don't think that he would have handled it better than
Joe Biden,” Schmitt told Bolton.
“He did not,” Bolton replied. “We didn't sanction Nord Stream 2. We should have. We should have brought the project to an end. We did impose sanctions on Russian oligarchs and several others because of their sales of S-400 anti-aircraft systems to other countries. But in almost every case, the sanctions were imposed with Trump complaining about it, saying we were being too hard.”
The Trump-era national security adviser claimed the former president did not know where Ukraine was on a map and said he believed Russia did not take more aggressive actions while Trump was in office because Russia “didn’t feel that their military was ready.”
“The fact is that he barely knew where Ukraine was. He once asked
John Kelly, his second chief of staff, if Finland were a part of Russia. It’s just not accurate to say that Trump's behavior somehow deterred the Russians,” Bolton said.