Former President Donald Trump avoided condemning Vladimir Putin when asked by Fox News personality Sean Hannity if he agreed the Russian leader is “evil.”
The exchange occurred Thursday evening on Hannity’s show, which has been a source of Trump-friendly interviews. As the U.S. public has taken an increasingly negative opinion of Putin for his invasion of Ukraine, Trump and other conservative figures have been criticized for lionizing the Russian leader. Hannity offered Trump a clear opportunity to distance himself from Putin.
During the program, Hannity referenced Trump’s previous description of Putin as “smart.” The Fox News host then noted his closeness with the former president and teed up a question allowing Trump to strongly denounce Putin.
“I think I know you a little bit better than most people in the media,” said Hannity. “And I think you also recognize [Putin is] evil, do you not?”
“Well, I was referring to the fact that he said this is an independent nation, talking about Ukraine, and I said that this was before there was any attack,” Trump said, referring to Putin’s recognition of breakaway regions of Ukraine that have declared independence.
“[Putin] is calling it an independent nation,” continued Trump. “Now, a lot of things are changing. When you look, this doesn’t seem to be the same Putin I was dealing with. But I will tell you, he wouldn’t have changed if I were dealing with him.”
Related video: Hannity: We are witnessing the acts of an ‘evil, murdering, maniacal’ dictator (FOX News)
Trump pointed to the “incredible things that we did in the Trump administration,” such as supplying anti-tank Javelin missiles to the Ukrainian military, which he said President Joe Biden and others are taking credit for.
Trump in 2019 was impeached by the U.S. House for withholding military aid to Ukraine. The aid was eventually provided, and Trump was acquitted by the Senate.
Hannity asked Trump why he was so confident that the violence in Ukraine wouldn’t be happening under his watch.
“Well, before I answer that, I’ll tell you that under the Bush administration, there was Georgia, not the Georgia that we know and love but Georgia nevertheless, it was Georgia,” said Trump, referring to Georgia, a country in the Caucasus that fought a war with Russia in 2008.
Trump said that “nothing happened during our administration.”
John Bolton, who served as the president’s national security advisor, said during an interview with SiriusXM’s Julie Mason Wednesday that Putin didn’t invade Ukraine while Trump was in office because of the “president’s hostility with NATO.” Ukraine’s government has expressed interest in joining NATO, a defense pact that Biden has been more supportive of.
“So I think Putin saw Trump doing a lot of his work for him and thought, maybe in a second term, Trump would make good on his desire to get out of NATO, and then it would just ease Putin’s path just that much more,” Bolton added.
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Original Article: Here’s How Trump Responded When Hannity Encouraged Him to Say Putin Is Evil (msn.com)
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Hey Hannity, why don’t you push yourself and the rest of the “Fox Fakers” to say that “Ole, Slo’ Joe “Bite-me”, “Camela Embarris” and the rest of the Demo[n]cRATS are EVIL, you’re in their pocket to Wall Banger – per M. Savage!
Unless your kind and all of the AMERIKAN sheeple realize that we are in a battle of GOOD against EVIL then you can kiss this toddling third world banana republic goodbye – before the end of the year, guaranteed, fool!
right on, thev dems are pushing a lot of spending thru while the rest of the country looks at ukraine. wake up before we have another biden made crisis to deflect what is really being done at the expense of another countries people, to the dems and soros can control the new world order.
DemocRATS are evil, they are trying to destroy our country which is not a democracy, which they keep insisting we are, we are a republic with a constitution set to preserve our country, they are breaking every one of our constitutional laws, immigration for one, they are letting riff raff invade this country and it is time our military is designated to defend our border and turn these invaders around to return to their own country, declaring illegal babies are US citizens because of jurisdiction, illegals are not under US jurisdiction, they are still under the jurisdiction of the country of their birth, because they snuck over the border that denies their jurisdiction, they were not invited to be citizens of this country, their invasion is like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but the democRATS don’t care about the hardships they are putting on legal Americans, time we start fighting back against these invaders even if it takes shooting some of these killers, pedophiles, robbers, drunk drivers who commit vehicle murder and all the other evil border jumpers