Former President Donald Trump has congratulated Vladimir Putin for an historic U.S.-Russia prisoner swap in which more than two dozen people were freed including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich.
Trump had said back in May that he was the only person that could secure Gershkovich’s freedom and return to the U.S.
But he switched tactics at a presidential campaign rally in Georgia on Saturday and instead attacked President Joe Biden for handing over “some of the greatest killers in the world”—an apparent reference to Russian state assassin Vadim Krasikov.
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“I’d like to congratulate Vladimir Putin for having made yet another great deal. Did you see the deal we made?” the Republican presidential nominee to supporters.
“We got our people back, but boy we make some horrible, horrible deals,” Trump said. “It’s nice to say we got ’em back, but does that set a bad precedent?”
His niece, Mary Trump, posted the soundbite to X, with the caption “F---ing traitor.”
Russia on Thursday released 16 prisoners, both Westerners and Russian dissidents, in exchange for eight Russians, in the largest prisoner exchange since the end of the Cold War. Krasikov, a Russian secret service colonel, was serving a life sentence in Germany for murdering a Chechen dissident in Berlin.
“Deals like this one come with tough calls,” Biden said after greeting newly released detainees on the tarmac. “There’s nothing that matters more to me than protecting Americans at home and abroad.”
The former president also alleged that the prisoner swap included payments to Russia. However Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, said no money was exchanged nor sanctions loosened as part of the deal.
