“I think Zelensky is one of the greatest salesmen I’ve ever seen,” Mr. Trump said, repeating a statement he has made frequently. “Every time he comes in, we give him $100 billion. Who else got that kind of money in history? There’s never been. And that doesn’t mean I don’t want to help him, because I feel very badly for those people. But he should never have let that war start. That war is a loser.”
Mr. Trump has suggested before that blame for the widespread destruction caused by the Russian invasion rests with the Ukrainian president. Mr. Zelensky, he has said, should have cut a deal with Mr. Putin to avoid the invasion.
“Those cities are gone, they’re gone, and we continue to give billions of dollars to a man who refused to make a deal,” Mr. Trump said at a rally last month in Mint Hill, N.C. On the podcast, after lamenting the devastation in Ukraine, Mr. Trump pointed the finger at Mr. Biden. Speaking with the podcast’s host, Patrick Bet-David, a conservative finance entrepreneur, Mr. Trump denigrated Mr. Biden’s intelligence by claiming that with a smarter president, the war “would have been easy to settle.”
Asked about the comments, the Trump campaign declined to clarify.
In Rambling Interview, Trump Blames Zelensky, Not Putin, for Ukraine War - The New York Times
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