Trump: Biden's Afghanistan pullout made Putin think he could take Ukraine

Former President Donald Trump cast blame for the current state of global affairs on President Joe Biden Saturday night, arguing at a Michigan rally that his successor's handling of domestic affairs and the withdrawal from Afghanistan created the conditions for the problems plaguing the world.

The 45th commander-in-chief, who held the rally in Washington Township, Mich., as part of his "Save America" tour, began by reiterating his unproven claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election before taking aim at Democrats more directly. After slamming Biden's approach to economic and social issues, Trump argued that his successor's handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan gave way for Russian President Vladimir Putin's unprovoked military invasion of Ukraine.

“I think that when he saw what happened in Afghanistan, the way we ran," Trump said of Putin's point of view during last August's deadly military withdrawal from the Middle Eastern country. "We didn’t to have one soldier killed there in 18 months. I said, 'Abdul [Ghani Baradar — the de facto Taliban leader], there are going to be no more of our soldiers killed.' Not one person was killed for 18 months and Biden even said that. Then we lost thirteen, but they don’t talk about how horribly so many of them were wounded. This invasion of Ukraine would never have happened if I was in the White House, would never have happened, not ever."