1/ Donald Trump's interview with Newsmax yesterday shows very clearly that he subscribes to many false Russian-originated claims and conspiracy theories about the war in Ukraine and has a strong personal dislike of President Zelenskyy. Here's a full transcript:
2/ NEWSMAX: The Ukraine war, sir, is this is a war you could call a forever war. It's almost in calendar year — TRUMP: Terrible. NEWSMAX: We're almost at six years of this war. TRUMP: Terrible. It's supposed to be one day. 3/ NEWSMAX: Millions have died, by the way. And Ukraine, this report today, they have resumed strikes on Russian oil refineries. Diesel is extremely high all over the world. I thought you asked President Zelenskyy not to do that. 4/ TRUMP: Zelenskyy is a not a good guy for us to deal with. Biden gave him hundreds of billions of dollars, billions and billions of dollars. NEWSMAX: Have you lost faith in him? 5/ TRUMP: Well, I think they're going to, if they're going to end up with a settlement of some kind, they're not going to do it with him. He doesn't want to settle. He says he wants to settle, but he doesn't know. 6/ No, I'm not a, I'm not a big fan of Zelenskyy. They've destroyed that country. That country. Look, it really began with Barack Hussein Obama when they made them give up Crimea. Crimea is the most valuable part by far, of Ukraine. You know what I'm talking. It's the Black Sea. 7/ Four sides of ocean. Most beautiful piece of land. I'm a real estate developer. I know, I know good land. They gave up Crimea. But where it happened in a little bit more modern time is when Zelenskyy went to see Putin. And they had a very bad meeting. 8/ And as you know, Putin hates Zelensky and Zelensky hates Putin. And when you have that kind of hatred, it's very hard to get something settled. But that's a war that should have never started. NEWSMAX: Does that end — 9/ TRUMP: If the election weren't rigged, if the U.S. election would have weren't rigged, that would have never happened. That war would have never happened. That's the saddest part. But then it was supposed to be a very much, you know, a very quick war. 10/ And if you remember, the tanks going up the highway right into Kyiv had the general, who was obviously not a very good general, not made a right turn into farmland, which was soaked and soaking wet from the heaviest rain in ten years. 11/ They say he went right up into the mud and it was like quicksand and those tanks. 12/ So they got, I guess I don't know if you call it lucky or not lucky, frankly, because it's been five years and Ukraine has lost a tremendous you know, Ukraine has lost so many of its men and Russia too. But Russia is a massive country. Russia has millions of people — 13/ NEWSMAX: Up to 150 million people. Does that war end before you leave office? TRUMP: It should end soon. I think they actually both would like to see it end, but I think I find Zelensky to be more difficult to deal with than Putin... 14/ (On munitions shortages following the Iran War:) TRUMP: ...But the reason that we went lower than we'd like to, and only with certain munitions, not with very good stuff. But we have a lot. But now we're very rapidly building it up for purposes. 15/ But I just want to say it wasn't what I was doing with Iran. It was what Biden did with Ukraine. They gave him. They gave them, I call him P.T. Barnum. They gave to P.T. Barnum, which is Zelenskyy. Massive amounts of Patriots, of Tomahawks, of everything. 16/ And they didn't make him pay. There was nobody to pay. So I went to the European Union. I said, I'm not going to give you anything. You have to pay. They have a lot of money. They've been paying us and we send them munitions and that works. 17/ But over the last period of time, we just take the munitions for ourselves because we have to have for ourselves. We have to have. And once we are stocked, really stocked, we will start letting our allies buy them from us. 18/ But Biden should have made them pay. He gave hundreds of probably $350 billion worth of equipment and cash to Ukraine. Where is the cash that we gave to Ukraine? Where are all of those? Where is all the equipment? You know, people who are selling that equipment? 19/ Biden was giving them missiles, and they were being sold on the open market — NEWSMAX: Right. TRUMP: — after they went to Ukraine. 20/ NEWSMAX: And I asked you, because the war is at, it's at a stalemate over the Donbas region, which six years later, most Americans still can't find on a map. 21/ TRUMP: I'll tell you two things. Number one, had they not taken the right turn onto dirt, instead of going up a concrete highway, it would have ended in one day. So I can imagine Putin's not exactly thrilled because you're getting into six years. 22/ They're losing on average 25,000. Now that number is going up to 32,000. But 25,000 mostly men, mostly military, you know, small numbers relatively in towns and cities that are being hit, but they're losing a tremendous amount of people. And I want to see it stop. 23/ And I want Zelensky to stop. And I want Putin. Now, if you tell me that Zelensky is again shooting at refineries, all he's doing is making the world oil price higher, and he is doing that well. I think that's a disgrace. There's plenty of other targets they don't have to hit. 24/ There are a lot of targets that you can hit. But when you shoot at diesel refineries, when you make diesel oil, and we need that and the world needs that, then he's not doing a good service for the world — NEWSMAX: Mr. President — 25/ TRUMP: And I think that, frankly, Zelensky has been there a long time. And I think it's time for if they if they want to get that settled. So I watched an interview of a young woman the other day from Ukraine, and she said, President Zelensky has destroyed our country. 26/ President Zelensky has taken our men away from us. Our men have no legs, no arms. Our men are, in many cases in mental institutions or they're dead, she said. 27/ NEWSMAX: They need a two month pause to hold elections, to make that to make that a possibility. So we'll see what happens. Let me ask you, you mentioned — 28/ TRUMP: I think you need an election because there's nobody that's telling me that the people of Ukraine are satisfied having missiles hitting their apartment building. 29/ But there's truth because Russia's a massive country and Russia can lose a million men, and they have lots of other millions of men behind them. Ukraine doesn't have that kind of manpower. 30/ Now, at the same time, they're a much smaller, they have the best equipment in the world given by the United States. We have the best equipment. We make the best military equipment in the world by far. 31/ Now under me, and I'm the one that did it because I created I rebuilt our military during our first term, including Space Force. We started Space Force, but I rebuilt it. 32/ They expended a lot of our ammunition giving it to Ukraine. We spent very little relatively, [we] didn't use it on Iran. /end Source: youtube.com
(NB: Ukrainian sources are suggesting that Zelenskyy's former press secretary – now critic – Yulia Mendel is the "young woman from Ukraine" whose video Trump has been watching.)