Former President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he didn’t believe the United States got anything out of President Joe Biden’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity that Biden had given Putin exactly what he wanted — an international platform and relief of sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline — and that Putin had not given him anything in return. (RELATED: ‘Very Uncomfortable’: CNN Panel Addresses ‘Awkward’ And ‘Strange’ First Meeting Between Biden And ‘Sullen’ Putin)
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“Let’s start with your overall thoughts today, and what Biden was facing in Putin, and then we will move on from there,” Hannity began.
“Well, I guess the overall is we did not get anything. We gave a very big stage to Russia, and we got nothing,” Trump replied. “We gave up something that was unbelievably valuable. I stopped the pipeline, Nord Stream. The pipeline was stopped, and it was given back, and nothing was gotten for it.”
Trump went on to say that the meeting between Biden and Putin had essentially been “performance art,” adding, “You will take a look at how various people performed, namely the two people, you have to form your own judgment.”
Hannity jumped in with his next question, but Trump continued, “I think it was a good day for Russia. I don’t see what we got out of it.”
Hannity went on to say that not only had Biden waived the sanctions on Nord Stream 2 against advice from the State Department, but he had also done so while stopping the progress of the Keystone XL pipeline in the United States.
“I’m going to take it one more step further, if it was Donald Trump that did everything Joe did here, and then it was Donald Trump’s son, Don Jr., Eric Trump, that had monies transferred to their company from a Russian oligarchs, the first lady of Moscow, why do I suspect you’d be accused day and night, night and day, 24/7, of some type of family enrichment and collusion. I don’t know, I think there would be a lot different coverage. Am I wrong?” Hannity asked.
“Well, you just have to read the news. Look, for five years, from the day I came down the escalator, we have been under investigation, and it turned out to be all false stuff,” Trump said, noting that the constant accusations of collusion with Russia had made it more difficult for him to deal with Russia as president.
“But I guess you probably see, it was a few days ago, up to 12, and now it is up to 19 different things where we were accused and it turned out to be absolutely false, whether it is the Wuhan lab, the good old Wuhan lab, when I mentioned that, it was like a fire storm. Hydroxychloroquine, now great reviews are coming out on that. They did not want to see — creating a lot of problems and death, frankly, death, and they were willing to do that in order to try and take shots, but it’s all coming out,” Trump concluded. “I think the people understand it. I think that in many ways, we are stronger now than ever before. They understand the deception and the horror that these people put this country through. It’s really very sad, actually.”