Former President Donald Trump explained his plan to secure peace in Ukraine within 24 hours of taking back the White House on Sunday, saying he would tell Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to make a deal.

Trump made the comments during an interview on Fox News’ ‘Sunday Morning Futures’ with host Maria Bartiromo. The former president said he has a good relationship with both Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin, and added that President Biden is not capable of dealing with world leaders.

‘These are smart people, including Macron of France. I could go through the whole list of people, including Putin.… These people are sharp, tough and generally vicious. They’re vicious, and they’re at the top of their game. We have a man that has no clue what’s happening. It’s the most dangerous time in the history of our country,’ Trump said.

‘So what should be the response?’ Bartiromo asked. ‘You said you could end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. How would you do that?’

‘I know Zelensky very well. I felt he was very honorable because when they asked him about the perfect phone call that I made, he said it was indeed, he said it was. He didn’t even know what they were talking about. He could have grandstanded–’ Trump said before Bartiromo cut him off.

‘That’s not going to be enough for Putin to stop bombing,’ she pointed out. Trump then explained how he would get Russia and Ukraine to end their conflict.

‘I know Zelenskyy very well, and I know Putin very well, even better. And I had a good relationship, very good with both of them. I would tell Zelenskyy, no more. You got to make a deal. I would tell Putin, if you don’t make a deal, we’re going to give him a lot. We’re going to [give Ukraine] more than they ever got if we have to. I will have the deal done in one day. One day,’ Trump responded.

Trump is among several Republican 2024 presidential candidates who are skeptical of the war in Ukraine.

Mass riots that have torn through France in recent weeks have made migration, particularly mass migration from Africa, a top European issue once again while also resonating in the U.S. as it also continues to tackle an ongoing crisis at its southern border.

‘As the horrific riots in France have proven, we must also redouble our efforts to ensure that anyone who comes to America shares our values and assimilates into our culture,’ former President Donald Trump said last week. ‘We don’t want people coming into our country that hate us.’

The riots began after the June 27 death of Nahel Merzouk, a 17-year-old of Algeria-Morocco descent, who was shot and killed by a police officer during a traffic stop in Nanterre, a suburb of Paris.

It sparked historic violence even in a country known for its regular rioting on issues such as pensions. But these riots have led to hundreds of police officers injured and the destruction of buildings. An Associated Press tally found that more than 6,000 vehicles have been destroyed and more than 1,100 buildings attacked. France remained on edge ahead of its July 14 Bastille Day celebrations, with firework sales banned out of concern of ‘serious disturbances’ to public order.

It is similar in some respects to rioting seen in 2005 when there were weeks of rioting after the deaths of two teens of African heritage killed at a power station while fleeing police.

The riots have raised issues to do with alleged racism and discrimination by police against men of African descent, similar to the way that the 2020 riots in the U.S. in the wake of the death of George Floyd sparked a national conversation on race. Advocates have pointed to statistics that show Black or Arab men are 20 times more likely to be stopped by police. Some outlets have also cited statistics that only one in 10 of those arrested is a non-citizen.

But in France and across Europe, the unrest is reviving discussion about immigration, particularly from North Africa and Muslim countries, which became a major EU-wide issue during the 2015 migrant crisis but then largely drifted when COVID-19 hit in 2020.

The 2015 migrant crisis played a key role in both the victory of a number of right-wing movements in Europe, including Britain’s exit from the European Union, and the rise of a number of populist governments in countries, including Italy and Austria. It is also seen as playing a role in the victory of Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Now, with the riots having torn through France, many on the right in Europe and the U.S. are highlighting the connection with migration, arguing that it emerges from a lack of assimilation amid large numbers of arrivals.

In France, former right-wing presidential candidate Eric Zemmour was blunt in his assessment of the problem.

‘You tell us that these riots have nothing to do with immigration because many of the rioters are French. But it’s even worse. We have forged for 40 years a people of French people who hate France,’ he said.

Meanwhile, Poland cited the French riots when rejecting an EU migration agreement that would require countries to accept a certain number of migrants or be fined.

‘Shops looted, police cars set on fire, barricades in the streets – this is now happening in the center of Paris and many other French cities. We don’t want such scenes on Polish streets,’ Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki tweeted. ‘We don’t want scenes like this in any city in Europe. That is why we will defend the conclusions of the 2018 European Council, we will defend the principle of voluntary admission of immigrants. Stop illegal migration. Safety first.’

‘Europe is threatened by mobs of anti-Europeans who smash police stations, burn libraries and stab to steal a mobile phone, who are unwilling to adapt to our way of life and our laws,’ Spanish Vox party leader Santiago Abascal said, according to Politico. ‘They think that we are the ones who have to adapt.’

Douglas Murray, author of the 2017 book ‘The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam,’ told Fox News Digital that France and many other developed countries have ‘badly mismanaged migration.’

‘France has segments of the country that are populated by people who find it convenient to be in France because the standard of living is better than their home countries, but they’re not of France. Now, what normally happens at this stage is that people say, ‘Well, what can we do to integrate better?’ And the answer is: maybe nothing. Maybe they can’t be integrated. And that’s the fatalistic conclusion that an increasing number of French people come to: This isn’t working.’

‘Why do I say that? Because when, for instance, an incident like [the shooting] occurs, the idea that it automatically should lead to, as in 2005, mass civil disturbance, rioting, looting, burning is a suggestion that something else is going on,’ he said.

He disagreed with the claim made by some that police racism was the issue, saying that no matter the debate about the incident, it doesn’t justify the intense violence seen across the country.

‘It’s not about police racism. It’s not even about the police. It’s about a significant chunk of the migrant community who are not integrated and will not integrate and dislike the country they’re in,’ he said.

Alan Mendoza of the Henry Jackson Society recently told Fox News Digital that the riots are ‘the consequence of a failure to integrate the country’s Muslim immigrant population’ while also connecting the violence to French culture.

‘The France of legend is far removed from the daily realities of life in a ghettoized community that does not have the same opportunities to progress and succeed as the native population,’ he said. ‘France’s forgotten communities are showing that they will stay forgotten no longer. The simmering rage felt in the banlieues (suburbs) just needed a spark to explode and is now being taken advantage of by an anarchical strain of French society that has always welcomed disorder in the form of rioting and looting.’

The U.S., too, has been in the middle of a heated national about immigration – primarily illegal immigration. Presidential candidate Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, has come out promising to ‘stop the invasion’ as the U.S. continues to face a crisis at its southern border now into its third year that has seen historic numbers of migrants seeking entry.

As a result, the French riots are resonating with U.S. Republican politicians, too. Trump cited the riots when he promised to bring back his travel ban on certain countries if elected to the White House.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia also cited the riots, writing on social media, ‘Muslims migrated to France over the past two decades and France took them in while making it difficult for the people of France to own guns for [self-protection]. We need strict immigration laws and strong borders and always defend our great [Second Amendment] rights.’

France is not the only European country that is having difficulties with tackling migration. In the U.K., the government’s plan to send migrants to Rwanda was shot down by an appeals court last month. Britain has seen record numbers of migrants crossing from France in small boats, and its conservative government is under pressure to tackle the issue.

Murray, a Fox News contributor and National Review Institute fellow, says there are three key factors when it comes to mass migration: the speed at which people arrive, the number of arrivals, and the identity of those people.

What the U.S. is facing, a crisis of illegal immigration at its southern border primarily from Latin America, may have similarities in terms of numbers and speed, but Murray says the identity issue is a key difference.

‘Most people who study migration, like me, would say that America has a serious border problem, and there is much to be said about the importance of plugging that problem. Nevertheless, by comparison, and I’m not by any means downplaying this, America has migration from the Central, South American world. Europe, France has migration from Africa. And it’s a simple truism to say that that is a harder integration process,’ he said.

Murray said, however, that there is a common factor connecting the U.S. and Western Europe on the question of migration.

‘The huge similarity is that both America and Western Europe seem to have lost the ability to say ‘no.’ There are too many people in charge who cannot justify why the world should not come in,’ he said. ‘And remember, it was not long ago that mainstream Democrats like [Senate Majority Leader] Chuck Schumer used to acknowledge that you’ve got to get rid of illegals in America. Now it’s all about amnesty, it’s all about welcoming people at the border, helping them, people fleeing oppression, economic deprivation and much more.’

He also warned that the U.S. could eventually see the sort of violence that recently tore through France.

‘The American political class has increasingly ended up in the same position as the European political class, which is they cannot find a way to justify having secure borders and repelling illegal migration,’ he said. ‘And so it continues, and it gets encouraged, and it acts as a pull factor, which will only increase the numbers in the years ahead. And the results will be of the kind that we’ve seen in France.’

Fox News’ Peter Aitken and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

EXCLUSIVE: A top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee is warning of a growing Chinese Communist Party influence in Latin America – as he returns from a trip to the region, where he spoke to officials about the dangers of the geopolitical foe.

Rep. August Pfluger, R-Texas, led a congressional delegation to the region, which included Brazil, Colombia and Panama. Lawmakers spoke with government officials and representatives from the private sector. They also toured the Darien Gap region and had briefings from law enforcement officials in multiple countries.  

Much attention has been focused on the flow of migrants to the U.S. through the gap, as migrants from countries such as Venezuela make their way north to try and enter the U.S. amid an ongoing border crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border.

But Pfluger is alert to a different threat that the U.S. needs to tackle – telling Fox News Digital in an interview that the Chinese Communist Party is ‘present in this region, they’re present in the trade relationships, they’re present with telecommunications, they’re present with a desire to build ports and use their own tactics.’ 

‘And so we have to be working in this area because it’s not just about the issues that we see on our border. The homeland security of the United States depends on us engaging, and quite frankly, I think that we have ignored this region,’ he said.

Last month, it was revealed that China has been seeking to build a listening post in Cuba, something the U.S. government has called an ‘ongoing issue.’

Meanwhile, other lawmakers have also highlighted the threat. Sen Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., has warned about the threat of Chinese influence where he said there was a ‘vacuum’ left due to a lack of U.S. leadership.

In conversations with government officials, Pfluger, who is chairman of the Counterterrorism, Law Enforcement, and Intelligence Subcommittee, said he brought the threat up repeatedly.

‘My message to the foreign ministers in these countries was very simple. I basically said ‘You and your countries have to push back, and you have to be clear-eyed about what the objectives of the Chinese Communist Party are.’ And I think that they were somewhat surprised to hear such a strong message.’

Pfluger noted that Panama signed onto aspects of the Chinese Belt & Road Initiative in recent years and is trading with the regime. Pfluger said it was a key area where China is seeking greater control.

‘The Panama Canal is a very strategic point and the Chinese have been desiring control of both the Pacific and the Atlantic side to build ports, to build projects that would give them a greater degree of control over the Panama Canal. So when you talk about the shipping – of course, if you control the shipping line that goes through there, then you can really move the needle and influence the region,’ he said.

‘I did not mince my words to the foreign minister of Colombia and the foreign minister of Panama, when I said, ‘We need you as a partner to push back against the Chinese Communist Party, especially in the area of ports and telecommunications, because they desire to undermine the Western world and freedom,’’ he said.

Pfluger says the ongoing crisis of migrants and drugs up through the continent and into the U.S. is related to Chinese influence in the region.

‘If the Chinese Communist Party can get a foothold in those countries, then think about the increases in narcotic trafficking and human trafficking that would exist,’ he said.

He also said there are signs of an increase in specific routes set up by trafficking organizations to fly from China into South America and move north. 

‘We have seen Chinese high-value targets in my district that have been arrested and apprehended in the last couple of years, and the uptick has increased sharply. And so the malign activity, if they get influence in these countries, will continue to increase in a lot of other areas,’ he said.

‘We know that the Chinese Communist Party wants to undermine the United States in any and all areas that they possibly can. And it starts by gaining a foothold with partners. And, you know, maybe it starts economically and it doesn’t look like it’s that serious. But we know it’s serious because we’ve seen it all throughout the world.’

Former President Donald Trump said he believes the Secret Service knows who owned the bag of cocaine found at the White House.

In an interview with ‘Sunday Morning Futures’ host Maria Bartiromo that aired Sunday morning, Trump doubted that officials could not know who owned the substance that officials said was located near the White House’s West Executive entrance in the Situation Room.

‘You know how many cameras they have opposite the front door of the Situation Room?’ Trump asked.

‘I’ve gotten to know the Secret Service really well, and I can’t speak more highly of these people, they are incredible people,’ Trump added. ‘And I believe that they know everything – they’re really smart and good at what they do.’

The bag of cocaine was found at the White House in July, and it was announced last week the Secret Service was unable to identify who owned it.

Trump, in the Sunday interview, was highly skeptical of the outcome of the probe. 

‘I don’t think it’s possible for bags of cocaine to be left in a certain area, in the Situation Room,’ he added. ‘I’m not talking about five blocks away, the Situation Room, where you decide on war, where you decide on nuclear.’

The Secret Service said in a statement Thursday that their investigation ‘included a backwards examination that spanned several days prior to the discovery of the substance and developed an index of several hundred individuals who may have accessed the area where the substance was found,.’

Investigators developed ‘a pool of known persons for comparison of forensic evidence gleaned from the FBI’s analysis of the substance’s packaging,’ the Secret Service said. The investigation’did not develop latent fingerprints and insufficient DNA was present for investigative comparisons,’ they added.

Retired Navy Rear Adm. John Kirby lauded the Secret Service’s investigation into cocaine that was found at the White House despite the agency not identifying a suspect in the case. 

‘They did the best they could to track down how it got there and who it might have belonged to. And they just were not able to come up with any forensic evidence that proves it,’ Kirby, who now serves as coordinator for strategic communications at the National Security Council, told Fox News’ Shannon Bream on ‘Fox News Sunday.’

The Secret Service announced Thursday that it closed an investigation into cocaine that was found inside the White House on July 2.

‘This review included a backwards examination that spanned several days prior to the discovery of the substance and developed an index of several hundred individuals who may have accessed the area where the substance was found,’ the Secret Service said in a statement last week.

The law enforcement agency added that there was no surveillance footage ‘that provided investigative leads or any other means for investigators to identify who may have deposited the found substance in this area.’

‘Without physical evidence, the investigation will not be able to single out a person of interest from the hundreds of individuals who passed through the vestibule where the cocaine was discovered,’ the Secret Service continued.

Kirby said the Biden administration takes the matter ‘seriously,’ while noting the cocaine was found in a highly trafficked area of the White House.

‘That’s not the kind of thing we want to see happen. Now it did happen in a visitor’s lobby area… just outside the main West Wing. So it was a highly-trafficked area. We’re going to take a look at how that happened. And obviously… if there’s things we can do to prevent that and in the future, certainly we’ll do that. Nobody’s happy about this,’ Kirby concluded. 

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Former President Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign fired back Sunday at one of Trump’s Republican opponents who made two Sunday morning media appearances and repeatedly attacked him, trying to bait him into joining the Republican primary debates.

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who has been increasing his attacks on the former president, appeared on ABC’s ‘This Week’ and CNN’s ‘State of the Union,’ where he criticized the former president for not yet committing to joining his fellow Republican opponents in a presidential primary debate.

‘Come on Donald, get on the stage and defend your record,’ Christie said on ABC. ‘If you want to be the nominee, you need to defend your record.’

He also said he thinks Trump will definitely join the primary debates because of his ‘ego’ and that he would be ‘frustrated’ watching the debates on television and seeing what Christie was going to do to him.

During the CNN interview, Christie also attacked Trump, calling him a ‘liar and a coward.’

‘He should show up at the debate and defend his record,’ he reiterated.

A spokesperson for Trump’s campaign fired back at Christie when asked to respond to his repeated attacks on Trump during the two interviews, saying he lives in a ‘perpetual fantasy land.’

‘Chris Christie lives in a perpetual fantasy land where he thinks he can be president,’ Steven Cheung, Trump’s campaign spokesman, told Fox News Digital. ‘Everything that comes out of his mouth is a lie wrapped in incoherent psychotic rage and he needs to get some professional help.’

Christie countered Trump’s claims that his indictment for the possession of classified documents is a plot to hurt his campaign.

‘He’s not getting indicted for anything other than his own conduct,’ he said. ‘He’s indicted because of his outrageous conduct.’

Trump, in an interview on Fox News’ ‘Sunday Morning Futures,’ called Christie a ‘sad case.’

‘He probably won’t even make the debate stage,’ Trump said of the former governor.

Christie endorsed Trump for president in 2015 after he dropped out of the Republican presidential primary and went on to lead his presidential planning team after the election. But the former governor emerged as a leading critic of Trump within the Republican Party after the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Trump claimed in the interview that Christie recommended he appoint Christopher Wray as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

President Biden’s administration vowed consequences for those responsible for hacking a Microsoft cloud system that granted access to government emails on Sunday.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan made the statement during an appearance on ABC’s ‘This Week,’ saying investigators are still working to pin down the source of the hack. Preliminary investigations suggest the hack came from a China-based group.

‘This was actually an intrusion into a Microsoft cloud system, and through that cloud system they got into unclassified U.S. government emails. It was the U.S. government who discovered the intrusion, alerted Microsoft, got it shut down. And now we’re taking steps to ensure that’s not an ongoing vulnerability,’ Sullivan said.

‘Secondly, this is the type of activity and behavior that we have seen from multiple foreign adversaries over multiple administrations. And in every case, we take the necessary time and rigor to be able to fully investigate what happened, who did it, and what the best response is. We’re still in the middle of that. So I’m going to leave it to our continued working through of this challenge. But as we have in the past, we will take steps to hold those who perform this responsible,’ he added.

Microsoft stated last week that a China-based hacking group it identified as Storm-0558 breached email accounts from approximately 25 organizations, including U.S. government agencies.

The threat actor, the tech giant noted, primarily targets government agencies in Western Europe and focuses on espionage, data theft and credential access. 

‘We have been working with the impacted customers and notifying them prior to going public with further details. At this stage – and in coordination with customers – we are sharing the details of the incident and threat actor to benefit the industry,’ Microsoft said in a blog post.

Microsoft began an investigation into anomalous mail activity based on customer-reported information on June 16, with the inquiry revealing that Storm-0558 gained access to organization and consumer email accounts using Outlook Web Access Exchange Online and Outlook.com starting on May 15.

Earlier in the year, Microsoft said state-backed Chinese hackers have been targeting U.S. critical infrastructure and could be laying the technical groundwork for the potential disruption of critical communications between the U.S. and Asia during future crises.

John Kirby, coordinator for strategic communications at the National Security Council, said the Biden administration is working with the defense industry to increase the production of munitions as concerns grow that the nation’s weapon’s supply is dwindling.

‘We’re working very closely with the defense industry to try to ramp up production, particularly for artillery shells,’ Kirby told Fox News’ Shannon Bream on ‘Fox News Sunday.’

‘You saw that we gave some cluster munitions to Ukraine as a bridging solution here while we ramp up production. We’re having very, very strong conversations with the defense industry and we believe that we’ll be able to get there.’

Kirby was responding to a segment reporting that a Center for Strategic and International Studies report found replacing inventories for ammunitions such as 155 mm shells could take between four and seven years. Replacing Javelins could take up to eight years and Stingers up to as many as 18 years, according to the report.

Kirby said replacing the munitions, as the war in Ukraine continues and tensions rise in Taiwan, is not a matter of funding.

‘The defense industry obviously wants to make sure that if they’re going to increase production, that that production rate is going to stay elevated for a period of time. Because that means hiring more workers, it means retooling and adding capacity in their factories and manufacturing capabilities. So we understand that and that’s sort of the central thesis here of the discussions that we’re having with them, is to get them to increase production and let them know that we’re serious about doing that for some period of time,’ Kirby said. 

Kirby’s comments come after President Biden said on TV that the United States is low on 155 mm artillery rounds.

‘This is a war relating to munitions. And they’re running out of that ammunition, and we’re low on it,’ Biden told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria last Sunday. ‘And so, what I finally did, I took the recommendation of the Defense Department to – not permanently – but to allow for this transition period while we get more 155 weapons, these shells, for the Ukrainians.’

Biden made the remarks while defending his administration’s move this summer to send cluster munitions to Ukraine as a ‘transition period’ until more munitions are produced.

Conservatives slammed Biden on social media following the comment, while others facetiously said they ‘love when the president of America goes on CNN to tell everyone we’re low on ammo.’

Fox News Digital’s Matteo Cina contributed to this report. 

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Republican presidential candidate Gov. Ron DeSantis rattled off a list of what he deemed to be broken 2016 campaign promises by former President Donald Trump, saying he’d rather attack the GOP front-runner on the issues than personality.

‘Substantively, we’ve been very frank about our differences with respect to the former president,’ the Florida governor said. ‘I mean, for example, he promised to drain the swamp – it got worse. He did not drain the swamp.

‘He promised to have Mexico pay for a border wall. They did like 50 miles of wall. There’s massive expanses still there,’ he continued. ‘He said he was going to eliminate the national debt. They added almost $8 trillion to the debt in four years.

‘And of course, in 2020, he turned the country over to Dr. [Anthony] Fauci, and those lockdowns and the borrowing and printing really set us on a bad course,’ he added. ‘I’ve been very, very frank at that.’

DeSantis made the comments Sunday on Fox News Channel’s ‘Media Buzz’ after anchor Howard Kurtz referred to recent criticism by fellow GOP candidate Chris Christie.

Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, has accused other Republican candidates of ‘playing footsie’ with Trump and credited himself as the only one willing to insult the former president.

‘I don’t do insults, so that is true,’ DeSantis responded Sunday. ‘I think just getting in this insult game turns voters off. It’s not something I want to do.’

‘I have no interest in attacking Donald Trump or any of these other candidates personally. I think we’ve got to rise above that and let’s focus on the issues,’ he added.

The Trump campaign responded to DeSantis’ remarks by calling him a loser.

‘Ron DeSantis is a loser and has clearly mismanaged his supporters’ donations and that’s why he’s forced to cut staff and roll back his flailing campaign,’ a campaign spokesperson told Fox News Digital Sunday afternoon. ‘If he can’t even run his own campaign correctly, how can he run a country?’