Former US President Donald Trump described Russian President Vladimir Putin as smart and Western leaders as very stupid, saying that if he was president of the United States, Russia would not have dared to attack Ukraine.
In a speech he delivered on Saturday evening at the 86-minute annual gathering of American conservatives in Orlando, Florida, Trump said, "The problem is not that Putin is smart because he is, of course, smart. The real problem is that our leaders are very stupid."
He considered that the Russian president took advantage of Biden's weakness and attacked Ukraine, and said that "Putin is manipulating Biden as he wants."
And he continued, "When George Bush was president of the United States, Russia invaded Georgia, during Obama's era it invaded Crimea, and during Biden's era it invaded Ukraine, and only during my time was Russia able to invade any country."
Although the former US president again praised the Russian president, attributing his boldness to the weakness of Biden and other Western leaders, he condemned the war waged by Russia on its western neighbor, describing it as appalling, and described Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as courageous, expressing his solidarity with the Ukrainians.
"As everyone understands, this horrific catastrophe would never have happened if our elections had not been rigged," Trump said, referring to the presidential election won by current President Joe Biden, in which the former president has so far refused to admit he lost.
In the past few days, the former US president made statements in which he seemed to understand the Russian attack on Ukraine, which began at dawn last Thursday.
In a newspaper interview published yesterday, Saturday, before Trump's speech in Orlando, Biden mocked his predecessor's description of the Russian president as smart, referring to previous statements by Trump describing himself as smart.