‘Would have lost us the Cold War’: Slotkin blasts Trump’s foreign policy in response to Congress address

Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., blasted President Donald Trump’s foreign policy agenda Tuesday after the president addressed Congress, claiming that Trump would have lost the Cold War if he’d been president in the 1980s. 

Slotkin’s remarks come after Trump delivered an address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday in a speech similar to the annual State of the Union, where he declared that “America is back” and that the “American dream is surging.” 

“We all want an end to the war in Ukraine, but Reagan understood that true strength required America to combine our military and economic might with moral clarity,” said Slotkin, who was tapped to deliver the official Democratic Party response to Trump’s address. “As a Cold War kid, I’m thankful it was Reagan and not Trump in office in the 1980s. Trump would have lost us the Cold War.”

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Slotkin zeroed in on Trump’s tense Friday exchange with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, where Trump and Vice President JD Vance sparred with Zelenskyy over whether diplomacy was the best avenue to bring peace to end the conflict. 

Trump and Vance said Zelenskyy wasn’t grateful to the U.S., and the exchange stalled peace negotiations to end the war in Ukraine and put a pause on a rare-earth minerals deal between Washington and Kyiv.

However, Trump revealed in his speech to Congress Tuesday that Ukraine was ready to resume peace negotiations, and was ready to sign a minerals agreement that would allow the U.S. access to Ukraine’s minerals in exchange for U.S. support in the country. 

While Trump has touted he seeks to achieve peace through strength, a term coined by former President Ronald Reagan, Reagan must be “rolling in his grave” following the “spectacle” between Trump and Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, Slotkin said. 

Slotkin, a former CIA analyst who worked at the Pentagon and the White House under both the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, also attacked the administration’s efforts to whittle down the federal government workforce. 

“The mindless firing of people who work to protect our nuclear weapons, keep our planes from crashing, and conduct the research that finds the cure for cancer — only to re-hire them two days later? No CEO in…