Trump gets schooled for claiming that Putin didn’t brag about Russia’s nuclear capability during his term

Donald Trump last week falsely claimed that while he was president, Vladimir Putin never bragged about Russia’s nuclear capability, CNN reports.

Trump on Friday in a speech at a National Rifle Association conference in Indianapolis said “nuclear” is one of the two “N-words” that world leaders should never use.

The former president said Putin’s use of the nuclear threat didn’t happen until Joe Biden became president.

“Now it’s talked about every single day, including by Putin. He goes, ‘You know, we’re a great nuclear power.’ He says that publicly now – he never said that when I was here,” Trump said.

IN OTHER NEWS: Marjorie Taylor Greene claims she saw 2,000 pages of evidence on 'Biden crime family'

“Because you don’t talk about it. It’s too destructive. You don’t talk about it. Now they’re talking about it all the time.”

Trump made a similar assertion in January, according to the report.

“If you take a look right now, the ‘nuclear’ word is being mentioned all the time,” he said in a video.

“This is a word that you’re not allowed to use. It was never used during the Trump administration. But now other countries are using that word against us because they have no respect for our leadership.”

Both statements have been deemed false, CNN fact checker Daniel Dale reports.

Dale writes that “Trump’s claims are false. During his time in the White House, Putin repeatedly referred to Russia as a ‘major nuclear power’ – in fact, Putin called both Russia and the US “major nuclear powers” as he stood beside Trump at a joint press conference in 2018 – while warning of the catastrophic consequences of a nuclear war and boasting about what he claimed were Russia’s nuclear capabilities.”

Dale notes that during a 2018 speech Putin boasted of a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile he described as “invincible.”

Trump in a 2018 phone call with Putin criticized the Russian leader over a video depicting a nuclear missile attack on Florida, Axios reports.

Putin in 2018 also issued an incendiary warning that he would use nuclear weapons in the event of an attack on Russia, according to a statement translated by The Moscow Times.

“An aggressor should know that vengeance is inevitable, that he will be annihilated, and we would be the victims of the aggression,” Putin said.

“We will go to heaven as martyrs, and they will just drop dead. They will not even have time to repent for this.”