Vice President JD Vance has expressed fondness for how “soft-spoken” Russian President Vladimir Putin is compared with media portrayals.
Speaking to Fox News’ Laura Ingraham, Vance, who berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office in February for failing to be sufficiently thankful for U.S. aid, said that while he has never met Putin in person, he has spoken to him several times and praised his phone manner.
“I’ve actually never met Putin. The president did that meeting. I’ve talked to him on the phone a number of times,” Vance said in reference to the flop Alaska summit between Trump and Putin last week, where the leaders failed to agree on a ceasefire in Ukraine.
“You know, it’s interesting. He’s more soft-spoken than you would necessarily expect. You know that the American media has a particular image of him,” Vance said. “He’s soft spoken in a certain way. He’s very deliberate; he’s very careful. And I think, fundamentally, he’s a person who looks out for the interests, as he sees it, of Russia.”
Vance added that while Trump’s relationship with Putin has been on shaky ground as the U.S. president tries to convince him to end the war in Ukraine, he believes Putin respects Trump because he “looks out for the interests of the American people.”
“While they often disagree about issues, and obviously, the president has been very critical of Vladimir Putin, the president’s also willing to work with anybody if he thinks it’s going to accomplish an important goal for America. And we all agree, an important goal is to stop the killing,” Vance said.
Trump, who vowed to end the war within one day of returning to the White House, claimed a potential breakthrough after meeting Zelensky and other European leaders on Monday, where “security guarantees” were discussed. Zelensky also agreed to a trilateral meeting with Putin, and Trump called the Russian leader to discuss it.
Vance said Trump was finally able to make some ground on Monday thanks to the president’s “no BS” diplomacy, including surprising European leaders by announcing he was going to call Putin immediately after the talks.
“So we’re actually in the East Wing of the White House, and the president says, ‘You know, we’ve had a pretty good meeting. I’m going to call Vladimir Putin, see what he says about it,’” Vance said.
“You had a lot of the Europeans who were saying, ‘No, there needs to be proper vetting and the teams have to prepare the phone call and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the President was like, ‘No, no, I want to talk to the guy. I’m going to talk to the guy.’” Vance said. “I think that kind of no-holds-barred, no BS diplomacy is part of the reason why we’ve made the progress we have.”
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