‘He’s no angel’: Trump shamelessly insults another world leader as they fight an ongoing war

Ukraine has been fighting for its survival for three years now, Donald Trump thinks that they should have surrendered one day one.

In an interview with Sean Hannity, Trump told the Fox News host that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made a mistake by resisting Russia’s invasion force. “Zelensky was fighting a much bigger entity, much bigger, much more powerful,” said Trump. “He shouldn’t have done that, because we could have made a deal.”

Trump has been talking up his ability to Art of the Deal a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine since before he became president. While on the campaign trail, Trump declared that he could have ended the war between the two nations in “24 hours,” and promised to do so on his first day in office. That obviously didn’t happen, but Trump and his allies likely knew that would be the case. As Election Day drew closer, Trump quietly walked back his claim, and his special envoy to Ukraine admitted that it would take closer to “100 days” for the president to broker a deal.

According to President Trump himself, “100 days” is still too soon. When asked at a recent press conference if the war between Russia and Ukraine would end by 2026, the president responded “you’ll have to ask Russia.”

While Trump himself doesn’t appear to have a plan to end the conflict, he’s keen to blame others for its continuation. In his interview with Sean Hannity, the president took shots at Zelensky, saying that the Ukrainian president was “no angel” for having “allowed” the Russian invasion to take place. Trump was hesitant to criticize the true culprit behind the war because he “loves” Russia, but finally admitted that Vladimir Putin “shouldn’t have done it.”

Trump’s tepid censure of Putin is at odds with his past praise of the Russian president. When Putin first ordered the invasion Ukraine, Trump said that the move was “genius” and “savvy” and went on to praise the Russian president as a “peacemaker.” Trump ate his words in his interview with Hannity, and told the host that conflict has been responsible for over a million casualties.

Trump went on to make a rare threat against Putin, saying that he would level ” “massive tariffs and massive taxes” against Russia. When asked by Hannity if he had spoken to Putin, Trump responded “I don’t want to say.”

Russia isn’t concerned with Trump’s threats. “We do not see any particular new elements here,” said Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov in an interview with the press. The Russian government has been unimpressed with Trump’s foreign policy for some time now. When Trump first bragged that he could end the war in 24 hours, the Russian ambassador to the U.N. was quick to shoot him down saying “the Ukrainian crisis cannot be solved in one day.”

Trump has frequently used the conflict to dish on his domestic enemies as well. In an interview from the Oval Office, Trump criticized the Biden administration’s response to the war, saying that it would have never have happened if Trump himself were in charge. “If you had a competent president, which you didn’t, the war wouldn’t have happened” Trump told reporters. Trump went on to repeat the half-decade old lie that the 2020 election was “rigged,” and that he was denied a chance to end the war due to corruption in the voting process. While Trump talks up what he could have done to stop the conflict, he says little about how he will do so now. Instead, he keeps on doing what he does best: blame everyone else.