Former President Donald Trump told Fox Business on Monday that Russian President Vladimir Putin has seemingly changed since two men were dealing with one another during the Trump administration.
This according to Brietbart’s account of the interview.
Speaking with Fox Business’ “Varney & Company,” Trump said that Putin “seems to be different” than the person he had routinely been in contact with when he was president. When asked if he respected Putin, Trump reiterated his sense that something had changed. He said that “[Putin] is a different person. I’ll tell you something — I got along with him, and look, I got along with him loving this country, and he loves his country, OK? But he’s a different person than he was. He seems to be different. He looks different. He looks different. He’s a different person.”
At that point, host Stuart Varney pointedly asked about Putin: “Is he sane? Is he solid mentally?”
Again suggesting a sense of something having shifted, without offering too many specifics, Trump responded that “it just doesn’t seem to be the same person that I was dealing with. We had a decent relationship. It was very hard because of the Russia hoax, you know.”
As Trump noted, his administration was dogged by allegations, unproven, that his election campaign had colluded with Moscow in 2020. It was apparently a topic that came up for repeated discussion when Trump spoke with Putin on other global issues.
“And I told him. I said, you know, it’s very hard for me to do anything for Russia and for you to do anything because these horrible, horrible people that are, you know, perpetrating this hoax, the Russia, Russia, Russia collusion nonsense, millions of phone calls; I never made one to Russia. Think of it. Millions of calls. They went through the phone records — millions of calls, not one call to Russia. It was a total hoax,” Trump added.
Democrat critics have assailed Trump in the past for seeming to express too much admiration for Putin, leader of a totalitarian government that’s long been the enemy of democracy. He has dismissed such claims as part of the hoax.
Trump was also criticized for referring to Putin as smart and savvy as the Russian leader invaded Ukraine last month. Trump quickly dismissed the dustup over his comments as part of an effort by the mainstream media to distract from the weaknesses of President Joe Biden and NATO — weaknesses of leadership that essentially laid out a “welcome mat” for Moscow to invade.
“The RINOs, warmongers, and fake news continue to blatantly lie and misrepresent my remarks on Putin because they know this terrible war being waged against Ukraine would have never happened under my watch,” Trump wrote in a statement from his Save America PAC.
© Newsmax
Trump isn’t the same person he was as president anymore either so it could be it’s his perception that changed.
Or it’s just a great way to avoid criticism of anything his administration did by saying “well back then I was dealing with a different person, things changed etc.”
Yeah. Originally Trump was a person who still held on the belief that the basic Federal organs of law and order in he United States were not yet taken over by political apparatchiks of the Democrat party. It took most of 4 long years to learn better. So he is not the same person – now he is different because now he knows he had been bamboozled by the FBi etc.
Back under the Trump administration Putin was a person who took the then-President of the United States seriously and Putin respected the then-President for the respect that the then-President showed Putin. But now the current President belongs to the party that had spent all those years spreading canards and hatred and connivances against Russia and has simply escalated ever more and more. Just how do you think that changed Putin?
It’s a shame Trump was coronavised back on Feb. 17th 2021.
Putin isn’t and neither is Trump who are in secure places. With the over 50 assassination attempts on Trump, he’d been long dead and so would Putin.
The only American politicians who saw through Putin were Mitt Romney and Joe Biden. George W. Bush and Donald Trump both thought they could deal with the madman just as Neville Chamberlain and Édouard Daladier thought they could deal with Adolf Hitler. Bush said he understood Putin’s soul and Biden correctly pointed out that Putin didn’t have one. And Romney was ridiculed all over the political spectrum for his insistence that the end of the Cold War didn’t end the Russian threat. At least Bush is keeping silent. Unfortunately a lot of commenters here are on the side of Putin and Russia rather than the United States.
I’d lot rather a politician who doesn’t see through Putin but doesn’t have him invading other countries while he president (like Trump) than a politician who does (like you believe Biden to) but still has this horrible war going on while he is president
Unfortunately you didn’t take the 4th dosage to clear masked brains.
Well, if you are an American, I will root for Putin. Liberal woke elitist Daren’s like you have to be taught a lesson.