Fact Check: Trump blames Biden for Tomahawk shortage, but the US never sent Ukraine any

Published October 16, 2026 • By Naeemofficial782

President Donald Trump told NewsMax in an interview broadcast Thursday that the United States is running low on ammunition not because of his war with Iran, but because former President Joe Biden gave "massive amounts" of Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine.

He also claimed that Ukraine sold those missiles on the open market. "Where are the money and the equipment that Biden gave them?" Trump asked. "People sold that equipment. Biden gave them missiles, and they were sold."

The claim is false. The United States has never supplied a single Tomahawk cruise missile to Ukraine.

The evidence

In July, Trump himself said Washington had "not agreed to transfer to Kiev either the technology for the production of Patriot systems or the Tomahawk cruise missiles," according to Russian state news agency TASS. That statement came after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had repeatedly requested the missiles, and Trump publicly declined to provide them.

The record is unambiguous on the question of past deliveries. The Biden administration's weapons packages to Ukraine included HIMARS, ATACMS, Patriot interceptors, and other systems — but never Tomahawks. As of July 2026, the Tomahawk had not been provided to Ukraine, and Trump confirmed it would not be, according to Yicai and CCTV reports.

Trump's own claim that Ukraine sold missiles it never received is made worse by the fact that he repeated it on the same day he met with Zelenskyy in Washington. The Ukrainian president was in the White House asking for the missiles Trump says he already gave away.

What's actually causing the shortage

The US military's munitions shortage is real. Officials have described it as "beyond critical," particularly for advanced interceptors. But the root cause is not Biden-era aid to Ukraine.

It's the war with Iran. According to Bloomberg, the US is estimated to have used more than half of its advanced Patriot missile variants, about one-third of its Tomahawk missiles, and nearly half of its precision strike missiles and THAAD interceptors during the conflict. The Center for Strategic and International Studies has said the depleted inventories have created a "window of vulnerability" for a potential Western Pacific conflict, as reported by Anadolu Agency.

Trump's own administration has acknowledged the shortage. In August, the White House called Biden's weapons transfers "deplorable and tragic," according to TASS — but it did not claim those transfers included Tomahawks, because they didn't.

Why this matters

This is not the first time Trump has made misleading claims about the Tomahawk. At the UN General Assembly in September, he claimed the US has "more munitions than we could ever possibly even think of using," according to the Associated Press. The Pentagon's own assessments contradict that.

The Tomahawk claim has a specific function. It shifts blame for a real military shortage onto a predecessor who did not cause it, and it avoids the uncomfortable fact that the Iran war — a conflict Trump initiated — is the primary driver of the depletion. The missile has become a political instrument, deployed to defend a war policy that has visibly drained US stockpiles.

The factual record is simple: the US never gave Ukraine Tomahawks. Ukraine never sold them. And the shortage Trump is describing has a different cause entirely — one that sits in the Oval Office, not in Biden's White House.