A viral video that’s been viewed nearly 700,000 times in just a few hours Friday appears to show Donald Trump talking with pro-golfer John Daly, and bragging about how Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin was his friend – but only while he was president.
In the video Trump also appears to imply he lied to the Russian autocrat, telling Putin if he bombed the U.S. he would nuke Russia.
“They’re all saying, ‘Oh, he’s a nuclear power,’ it’s like they’re afraid of him,” Trump says in the video with the camera on Daly.
“You know, he was a friend of mine I got along great with him,” Trump tells Daly, as if it is the job of the leader of the free world to “get along great” with a Russian authoritarian who is now, some are saying, a war criminal and a terrorist.
“I say, ‘Vladimir if you do it we’re hitting Moscow. We’re going to hit Moscow,’ Trump continues, apparently speaking about bombing the U.S. “And he sort of believed me like 5%, 10% that’s all you need,” Trump concludes, implying he was not telling the truth.
“He never did it during my time John, you know. They were all talking about it, ‘Why didn’t he do this during the last four years?’ Because he knew he couldn’t.”
Trump has been name-dropping Vladimir Putin recently in public, last week calling him a “genius” and “savvy.” Later at CPAC, the far-right Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump told attendees, “I was with Putin a lot, I spent a lot of time with him, I got along with him,” according to the Daily Mail.
Watch video of Trump and Daly, posted by Golf.com’s Tim Reilly: