Donald Trump blamed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for Russia’s invasion of his country and said President Biden could have settled the war before it started if he had "half a brain."
Trump's comments on a podcast released Thursday add to his controversial views on the war and are likely to raise doubts about how he would treat Ukraine should he win back the White House in November. He called Zelensky “one of the greatest salesmen I’ve ever seen" for extracting mountains of U.S. financial aid—money that has had bipartisan support. Republicans have increasingly been reticent to give more, after the more than $100 billion spent on the effort.
"And that doesn’t mean I don’t want to help him because I feel very badly for those people," Trump said on the PBD Podcast hosted by Patrick Bet-David. "But he should never have let that war start. That war is a loser. Ukraine, remember, is not Ukraine anymore. Every city, almost, is knocked down to the ground, all those beautiful golden domes are laying on their side, smashed to smithereens." Trump said he blamed Biden. "If we had a president with half a brain, it would have been easy to settle. Everyone will say, oh this is terrible, he's blaming Biden. Well, I do largely blame Biden."
Last month, Zelensky met with Trump in New York. Trump told reporters his priority was to end the war with “a fair deal for both sides.” He has declined to say whether he wanted Ukraine to win the war.