In a Sunday social media post, Trump wrote that he’d “always had a very good relationship” with Putin — with whom he is attempting to broker peace over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — but claimed “something has happened to him” after Russia launched a huge, new weekend assault on its neighbor.
Hume dismissed the notion that Putin’s behavior had changed.
Trump “has always had a very odd conception of Vladimir Putin,” Hume said. “I think he’s thought that he and Putin could be kind of friends and partners, and could make deals together.” Trump has for years talked about his admiration for his counterpart.
“I don’t know what the president’s talking about,” Hume continued. “This is the way Putin has always been. He’s always been a particularly brutal dictator, willing to take whatever measures he thought necessary to advance his interest, whatever he thought he could get away with.”
Hume added: “He’s the same old Vladimir Putin.”
Perhaps Trump had experienced “a real moment of truth” about the Russian leader, said Hume, who urged Trump to act accordingly, possibly by leveraging U.S. military or economic might — including increasing arms to Ukraine — to help “turn the tide” of the conflict, which he promised during his 2024 campaign to end on his very first day back in the White House, but has so far failed to do.
Watch Hume’s comments here:
