Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Donald Trump Jr. have joined forces to demand that the Biden administration opens “direct” negotiations with Moscow to end the Russia-Ukraine war over concerns of sparking a nuclear conflict.
Kennedy, who endorsed former President Donald Trump and suspended his own independent presidential campaign last month, recently accused President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken of “reckless escalation” following a New York Times report claiming that the administration would clear the way for Ukraine to use Western weapons to strike targets in Russia.
In an opinion article published by The Hill on Tuesday, Kennedy and Trump Jr., the former president’s eldest son, warned that the Biden administration approving Ukraine’s use of weapons inside Russia would be putting “the world at greater risk of nuclear conflagration than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis.”
They then suggested that the only reasonable way to end the war would be for Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, this year’s Democratic presidential nominee, to cut a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin. They did not mention what role Ukraine would play in the war-ending negotiations, if any.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is pictured on the left, while Donald Trump Jr. is shown on the right. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are featured in the inset. Kennedy and Trump demanded on Tuesday that the Biden administration open “direct” negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the Russia-Ukraine war.
Brandon Bell; Alex Wong; Michael M. Santiago
“At a time when American leaders should be focused on finding a diplomatic off-ramp to a war that should never have been allowed to take place, the Biden-Harris administration is instead pursuing a policy that Russia says it will interpret as an act of war,” Kennedy and Trump Jr. wrote.
“This game of nuclear ‘chicken’ has gone far enough,” they continued. “There is no remaining step between firing U.S. missiles deep into Russian territory and a nuclear exchange. We cannot get any closer to the brink than this.”
Kennedy and Trump Jr. went on to argue that “no vital American interest is at stake” in the Russia-Ukraine war, while arguing that concerns of “Russian forces rolling across Europe” if they are allowed to seize control of Ukraine are “absurd.”
They also argued that “Russia made its war aims very clear at the outset” of the Ukraine war, suggesting that both Putin’s claims of only wanting “Ukrainian neutrality and a halt to NATO‘s eastward expansion” and his threats to use nuclear weapons should be taken at face value.
“It is past time to de-escalate this conflict,” wrote Kennedy and Trump Jr. “This is more important than any of the political issues our nation argues about. Nuclear war would mean the end of civilization as we know it, maybe even the end of the human species.”
“Former President Donald Trump has vowed to end this war, but by the time he takes office, it might be too late. We need to demand, right now, that Harris and President Biden reverse their insane war agenda and open direct negotiations with Moscow,” they concluded.
Newsweek reached out for comment to the White House via email on Tuesday night.
Russia’s nuclear doctrine allows it to use nuclear weapons in the event of a nuclear attack by an enemy or a conventional attack that threatens the existence of the state. The U.S. attacks on Japan during World War II remain the only instances of nuclear weapons being used in war.
Putin and several of his allies have threatened to use nuclear weapons repeatedly since Russia launched its ongoing invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, although it is unclear what goal would be achieved by Russia using the weapons and effectively ensuring an equivalent retaliatory response.
A State Department spokesperson previously dismissed a nuclear threat by former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, a close ally of Putin, as “standard Kremlin nonsense” in a statement to Newsweek.
