ATLANTA \u2014 Former president Donald Trump congratulated Russian President Vladimir Putin over a prisoner swap that took place this week, saying the Russian strongman had outsmarted U.S. officials as part of the largest such deal since the end of the Cold War.<\/p>\n
At a rally here on Saturday, Trump did not mention any of the American prisoners who were released in the deal \u2014 including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was imprisoned for more than a year on charges the U.S. government has denounced as fabricated. In his previous comments on the deal, he did not mention any of the prisoners by name either, only criticizing the U.S. government.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d like to congratulate Vladimir Putin for having made yet another great deal. \u2026 We have 59 hostages, I never paid anything. \u2026 Boy, we make some horrible, horrible deals. It\u2019s nice to say we got \u2018em back, but does that set a bad precedent,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n
He did not mention any of the U.S. officials who worked on the deal for months.<\/p>\n
Trump had been reluctant to speak about Gershkovich for about the first year of the reporter\u2019s detention but finally called for his release in May. The former president has repeatedly bragged about his close relationship with Putin, but also says that Putin respects him and would have never invaded Ukraine if Trump was president.<\/p>\n
On several public occasions in recent months, Trump has said he would get Gershkovich released as soon as he was elected in November, and Putin would do it \u201cfor me, but not anyone else.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump seemed to lash out at the deal Thursday after it was trumpeted by President Biden and Vice President Harris, who met the prisoners at Joint Base Andrews in an emotional ceremony.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust curious because we never make good deals, at anything, but especially hostage swaps. Our \u2018negotiators\u2019 are always an embarrassment to us!\u201d he said in a Truth Social post on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Gershkovich was among 24 people freed in an exchange of prisoners held in seven countries \u2014 Russia and Belarus on one side, and the United States, Germany, Slovenia, Poland and Norway on the other. On the Russian side, 16 prisoners were released, including one who had been imprisoned in Belarus. German and American citizens and Russian dissidents were among the group, the majority of whom were flown to Germany. Russia received eight people in return, including assassin Vadim Krasikov, who had been imprisoned by Germany, and two hackers and an alleged smuggler with intelligence links held in the United States.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
ATLANTA \u2014 Former president Donald Trump congratulated Russian President Vladimir Putin over a prisoner swap…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":2393,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2392\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}