Hannity Repeatedly Invites Trump to Call Putin Evil — He Declines, Bashes Clinton and Democrats Instead

Former President Donald Trump failed to denounce Russian leader Vladimir Putin while on Hannity — despite the Fox News host’s many invitations to do so.

The former president called into Sean Hannity’s primetime show on Thursday night, during which the host noted that Trump came under fire recently for calling Putin smart.

“I think I know you a little bit better than most people in the media, and I think you also recognize he’s evil,” Hannity added. “Do you not?”

Trump proceeded to defend his comments, and falsely claimed that he called Putin smart prior to any attack on Ukraine. The former president, however, called the Russian leader smart while speaking at CPAC on Feb. 26, after Putin had already launched the invasion.

“Now, and a lot of things are changing, when you look, this doesn’t seem to be the same Putin that I was dealing with, but I will tell you, he wouldn’t have changed, if I were dealing with him, he wouldn’t have changed,” Trump continued.

Trump then praised himself for supplying javelins to Ukraine in 2019, later mocking former President Barack Obama for providing Ukrainians with “blankets.”

He went on to criticize President Joe Biden for calling Russia a nuclear nation, saying that the president should be highlighting that the United States is also a nuclear power.

Hannity then circled back to the criticism Trump faced for saying Putin is smart.

“You have often quoted to me Sun Tzu, The Art of War — ‘keep your friends close and your enemies closer,'” Hannity said to Trump. “Is that how you viewed Vladimir?”

The Fox News host then expanded the question, asking if that is how Trump also views Chinese President Xi Jinping, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, and the Iranian Mullahs.

Trump, once again, failed to denounce Putin, as well as Xi and Kim:

I got along with these people. I got along with them well. That doesn’t mean they are good people. That doesn’t mean anything other than the fact that I understood them, and perhaps they understood me,” Trump said. Maybe they understood me even better, that’s ok because they knew there would be a big penalty. In North Korea, I got along with Kim Jong-un. When I first came into office, as you know, President Obama met me in the oval office. He said probably the biggest problem we have is North Korea, we are going to end up winning a war with North Korea, could be a nuclear war. We have no problem with North Korea. I got along with him well. We understood each other. I got along with Putin, I got along with Xi — they understood.

Undeterred by Trump’s refusal to denounce Putin, Hannity once again asked Trump if he understood that these leaders were “capable of evil things.”

“Putin is for Russia, and you see what happened. And that is all because they didn’t respect our leader,” Trump said, before claiming that “nobody was tougher on Russia than me.”

Regardless of how tough Trump believes he was on Russia, during his interview with Hannity, he repeatedly failed to call Putin evil and instead went after Democrats.

“Nobody was ever tougher on Russia than me. Nobody was ever even close to being tough like I was on Russia, and then you hear the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, the whole hoax made up by Hillary Clinton and the Democrats, and frankly, that was very bad for our country,” Trump said.

“I said it very often, very, very bad, very dangerous, very bad, and hopefully a lot of things are going to happen with those people because they created a false narrative, but nobody was ever tough on Russia like I was, and Putin will tell you, but Putin will also tell a very small group of people that he would have never gone in while I was president, and he didn’t.”

Watch above, via Fox News.