Trump says he believes China will invade Taiwan

Former President Trump said on Wednesday that he believes China will invade Taiwan, saying he expected it to happen sooner rather than later.

Asked during an interview with Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo whether he thought an invasion would happen sooner rather than later, Trump said he did "because they're seeing how stupid the United States is run."

"They're seeing that our leaders are incompetent, and of course they're going to do - this is their time," he said.

China has tacitly backed Russia's invasion of Ukraine, an event that has raised fears further about a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan - which Beijing claims sovereignty over.

Trump, who was criticized during his presidency for being too cozy with Russian President Vladimir Putin, has had an up-and-down relationship with China. In the final year of his presidency, U.S.-China relations hit a new low as the Trump administration blamed Beijing for the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump, who is considering another run for the White House in 2024 and is the odds-on favorite to win the GOP nomination, has repeatedly criticized the Biden administration's policies.

In the Fox Business interview, he slammed the Biden administration's handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal, saying that the Chinese President Xi Jinping was taking cues from how the U.S. dealt with the situation.

"And he looks at what happened in Afghanistan, the way we pulled out," Trump said.

"He saw the way that we left Afghanistan like a surrender and left $85 billion and death behind and left American citizens there that are still trying to get out. And he sees that, and this is his opportunity to do what he wants to do, which is ... he's wanted to do that, and China's wanted to do that for decades," he later added.

A U.S. delegation led by former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mike Mullen is visiting Taiwan this week to meet with President Tsai Ing-wen and other Taiwanese officials to show their support for the island. The planned visit has drawn criticism from Beijing.

Taiwan's commitment to President Biden's campaign to support Ukraine and impose sanctions on Russia - announcing it would remove some Russian banks from the SWIFT financial messaging system - is further raising the risk that Beijing will seek to forcefully assert itself over the island.

Beijing says it opposes the imposition of all unilateral sanctions in response to the U.S.-led campaign against Russia.

Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs last week tweeted that China "is waging a campaign of cognitive warfare against Taiwan seeking to sow doubt over the U.S. and E.U. and sap our will to defend. But Taiwan stays vigilant and knows who to side with. We condemn and sanction the aggressor and 'Stand with Ukraine.'"