President Donald Trump bragged that at least Russian President Vladimir Putin “respects our country now” after he failed to cement a ceasefire deal that would end the country’s invasion of Ukraine.
Talking up the deftness of his dealmaking, Trump told Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade that he would know “in the first couple of minutes” if his historic Friday morning summit with Putin in Alaska was a bust.
With media outlets reporting that Trump walked away from the meeting empty-handed, the president went into full damage control mode in a Friday night debrief with Fox News host Sean Hannity, blaming the meeting’s failure on former President Joe Biden.
Trump, 79, claimed that he has “always had a great relationship with President Putin” and they “would have done great things together” if not for the “Russia Russia Russia hoax.”
“He would look and see what happened and think we’re crazy with the made-up Russia Russia Russia hoax,” Trump said of Putin, 72. “We had a very good meeting today, but we will see. You know, you have to get a deal … we agreed on a lot of points.”
Trump claimed Putin told him that Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine would have never happened if he had been president instead of Biden.
“I was very happy to hear him say if I was [sic] president that war would have never happened,” Trump said.
Hannity asked, “Any specifics come up as to why he said that?”
“He did. It doesn’t matter at this point,” Trump said. “This war should have never happened.”
He proceeded to throw Biden under the bus with more obscurities about how the conflict wouldn’t have happened under his watch, but he refused to say why or how.
Asked to score the meeting on a scale from 1 to 10, Trump said it was “a 10” in “the sense that we got along great, and it’s good when two big powers get along, especially when they are nuclear powers.”
Hannity again appeared to be setting Trump up to talk about how sanctions against Russia had brought Putin to the negotiating table, citing Trump’s implementation of tariffs to ink trade deals as an example.
However, Trump instead opted to flatter Putin.
“I don’t want to say anything brought him to the table,” Trump said. “He’s a very smart guy. Nothing brought him to the table, so to speak.”
“He respects our country now,” Trump added. “He didn’t respect it under Biden, I can tell you that. And I was so happy when he said this would have never happened. All those lives would have been saved if we had a competent president.”
With “a lot of points agreed on” but a deal still “not done,” Trump punted the responsibility to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
“Now it’s really up to President Zelenskyy to get it done,” Trump told Hannity. “And I would also say the European nations have to get involved a little bit. But it’s up to President Zelenskyy, and if they would like, I will be at that next meeting.”
“We have a pretty good chance of getting it done,” he added.
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