Trump Says He Rejected Putin’s Offer to Help Negotiate Israel-Iran Conflict: ‘Mediate Your Own’ War

President Donald Trump spoke about the ongoing Israel-Iran conflict during an impromptu press conference on the White House lawn on Wednesday after he visited with some construction workers putting up new flag poles on the ground.

At one point in the exchange, Trump boasted about the U.S. achieving dominance over Iran’s skies before pivoting to discuss a recent phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“I mean, they’re totally defenseless. They have no air defense whatsoever. They’re totally captured. You know, we’ve totally captured the air,” Trump said of Iran’s airspace.

Trump then called on a reporter for another question, who asked, “Mr. President, you’ve been fairly compassionate towards the Iranian people—”

“I know a lot of people from Iran, from New York, from Washington, mostly from New York. They are incredible people. They’re smart, they’re energetic, they can be difficult, but so can you. You know, they are great people, smart people. And those people are getting the hell beat out of them now. And it’s really a shame. It’s so stupid. It’s stupid. This is another one. You know, Russia-Ukraine is so stupid, would have never happened if I was president,” Trump replied.

“You guys agree with that, right?” added the president, turning to the construction workers for reassurance.

“Would have never happened if I were president. Putin wouldn’t have done it. And I spoke to him yesterday, and I said, you know, he actually offered to help mediate. I said, ‘Do me a favor. Mediate your own. Let’s mediate Russia first, OK?’ I said, ‘Vladimir. Let’s mediate Russia first. You can worry about this later.’ But I think that’s going to work out, too, but so many people have been killed. The big thing with that one is far more people are dead than have been reported in the Ukraine-Russia. Many, many more people. A building falls down, they say nobody was hurt, you know. So, it’s ridiculous,” Trump concluded.

A different reporter then asked, “What does ‘unconditional surrender’ mean?”

“Well, you know what it means, ‘unconditional surrender.’ Two very simple words. A very simple, ‘unconditional surrender.’ That means I’ve had it. Okay, I’ve had it, I give up, no more. Then we go blow up all the nuclear stuff that’s all over the place there. No, they had bad intentions. You know, for 40 years they’ve been saying, ‘Death to America, Death to Israel,’ death to anybody else that they didn’t like,” Trump replied, adding:

They were bullies. They were schoolyard bullies, and now they’re not bullies anymore, but we’ll see what happens. Look, nothing’s finished until it’s finished. Generally war is very complex, a lot of bad things can happen. A lot of turns are made, so I don’t know. I wouldn’t say that we won anything yet. I would say that we sure as hell made a lot of progress, and we’ll see. The next week is gonna be very big, maybe less than a week, maybe less.

But is there anybody here that said it would be okay to have a hostile, very zealous, really, but to have hostile country have a nuclear weapon that could destroy 25 miles, but much more than that, could destroy other nations just by the breeze blowing the dust. You know, that dust blows to other nations and they get decimated. This is just not a threat you can have. And we’ve been threatened by Iran for many years. And if you go back and look at my history, if you go back 15 years, I was saying we cannot let Iran get a nuclear weapon. I’ve been saying it for a long time and I mean it more now than I ever meant it.

Watch the clip above via CNN.