Donald Trump is siding with “tough and smart and funny” Vladimir Putin while attacking President Joe Biden as the U.S. and its NATO allies are working hard to prevent the Russian president from launching an all-out land war in the sovereign nation of Ukraine.
“I think he has a great way,” Trump says of Putin in an undated video Bill O’Reilly posted Monday morning to promote streaming video of the pair’s tour. It is not known when the video was recorded.
“He’s a leader,” Trump continues on Putin. “He’s sharp. He’s at the top of his game. Our guy,” he says of President Biden, “was never at the top of his game. You could go back 30 years ago, he wasn’t at the top of his game.”
This may be the first time an American president has sided with the leader of a foreign adversary nation amid the drums of war. Indeed, experts say Putin may strike Ukraine as early as this week.
“Is Putin ready to start a war?” O’Reilly asks Trump in the video. “Do you think he wants to do that?”
“Okay,” Trump replies, “first of all, you never heard about this when I was president. You never heard about this. They didn’t have hundreds of thousands. I hear it’s up to 175 and going to 200,000,” Trump says of troop estimates, which date back to December. Current estimates are 130,000.
“You never heard about Taiwan being having bombers flying all over the place. They’re flying bombers up because President Xi respected our nation,” Trump continues. “I won’t even say respected me, he respected us. He respected us as a nation. He respected me and Putin respected us as a nation, respected me.”
In another segment, O’Reilly asks, “when you dealt with Putin, did you see anything about him that was worthy? I mean, look, Russia’s people hack us. They try to interfere in our elections and give us a hard time.”
Stunningly, Trump, the former Commander in Chief responds: “And we hack them also, by the way, but that’s okay.”
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