Donald Trump Jr. and former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. blasted the Biden-Harris administration in an opinion piece published by The Hill on Tuesday after The New York Times reported last week that the president is open to Ukraine using long-range missiles on Russia.
"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," the two men wrote.
They were referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin's past statements that warned NATO countries to expect war if they allowed Ukraine to strike inside Russia with long-range weapons.
"This would in a significant way change the very nature of the conflict," Putin said last week. "It would mean that NATO countries, the U.S., European countries, are at war with Russia."
On Friday, Biden dismissed Putin's threat before meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, telling journalists that he doesn't "think much about Vladimir Putin."
RFK Jr. and Trump Jr.'s opinion piece follows the Times' reporting that the president "appears on the verge of clearing the way for Ukraine to launch long-range Western weapons deep inside Russian territory," with the caveat that the embattled nation "doesn't use arms provided by the United States."
When asked if he would allow Western-supplied long-range missiles to target sites within Russia, Biden reportedly responded, "We are working that out right now."
On Capitol Hill, prominent House Republicans called on Biden last week to reverse a policy that prevents Ukraine from striking areas inside Russia with U.S-made weapons.
In a letter dated Sept. 9, House Armed Services Committee Chair Mike Rogers, R-Ala., and House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said the administration's restrictions have had a negative impact on Kyiv's "ability to defeat Russia's war of aggression and have given the Kremlin's forces a sanctuary from which it can attack Ukraine with impunity."
"As long as it is conducting its brutal, full-scale war of aggression, Russia must not be given a sanctuary from which it can execute its war crimes against Ukraine with impunity," the congressmen wrote, according to The Hill. "The Biden-Harris administration's senseless restrictions, combined with the longstanding slow-rolling of critical weapons approvals and deliveries, are hindering Ukraine's ability to bring this war to a victorious conclusion."
In their Tuesday opinion piece, Kennedy and Trump argue that the "hawks in the Biden administration seem to have forgotten that Russia is a nuclear power."
"They have forgotten the wisdom of John F. Kennedy, who said in 1963, 'Nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war,'" they wrote. "We should take this advice seriously."