Donald Trump Says Putin is Smart and ‘Our Leaders Are Dumb’ in CPAC Speech
Donald Trump spoke at CPAC 2022 on Saturday and said on the subject of Ukraine that Russian President Vladimir Putin is smart but American and NATO leaders are dumb. He said that’s part of the reason this “an assault on humanity” is taking place on President Joe Biden‘s watch.
Trump said Biden’s weakness and the failures in the Afghanistan withdrawal are what prompted Putin’s decision to invade, he has “no doubt.”
“Nobody could ever believe how bad and weak and grossly incompetent he has been. And when you have a weak president who is not respected by other nations, you have a very chaotic world,” said Trump. “And the world hasn’t been this chaotic since World War II.”
“I have no doubt that President Putin made his decision to ruthlessly attack Ukraine only after watching the pathetic withdrawal from Afghanistan, where the military was taken out first,” he said. “Our soldiers were killed and American hostages, plus 85 billion dollars worth of the finest equipment anywhere in the world were left behind.”
Trump has taken flack for over a week for his continued praise of Putin, whom he described as “savvy” among other things, and he brought up that criticism in his remarks on Saturday.
“Yesterday, reporters asked me if I thought President Putin was smart. I said, of course, he’s smart,” Trump said, and explained that he took criticism for that comment but he likes “to tell the truth.”
“Yes, he’s smart. The NATO nations and indeed the world as he looks over what’s happening strategically, with no repercussions or threats whatsoever. They’re not so smart,” Trump said. “They’re looking the opposite of smart.”
He mocked the idea of sanctions being pushed by NATO, the United Nations, and individual countries to include the United States, saying threatening sanctions is a “pretty weak statement.”
“Putin is saying, ‘Oh, they’re going to sanction me. They sanctioned me for the last 25 years. You mean I can take over a whoole country and they’re going to sanction me. You mean they’re not going to blow us to pieces, at least psychologically?'” he said.
“The problem is not that Putin is smart, which of course, he’s smart,” Trump said, “But the real problem is that our leaders are dumb. Dumb. So dumb.”
Earlier in his speech, Trump said that under his leadership “we were a smart country. Now we’re a stupid country.”
Trump did not frame Putin’s attack as anything positive, and said that world leaders were dumb for not stopping the aggression through harsher means.
“They so far allowed him to get away with this travesty, an assault on humanity,” he said describing the invasion of Ukraine. “That’s what it is. This is an assault on humanity. So sad.”
“Putin is playing Biden like a drum,” Trump said, “and it’s not a pretty thing as somebody that loves our country to watch, just not a pretty thing to watch.”
Trump went on to blast Putin for making a fortune off of the suffering and death in Ukraine by driving up the price of oil. He also referred to the invasion as an “atrocity” elsewhere in the speech.
Watch the clip above, via CSPAN.
