President Donald Trump revealed the details of his conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy Wednesday night during a town hall with NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo, former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, and ESPN host Stephen A. Smith.
O’Reilly asked Trump about the signing of a minerals deal between the U.S. and Ukraine, and the contents of the conversation between the two leaders that happened while they both attended Pope Francis’ funeral in Rome, Italy, last week.
“I was telling him that ‘it’s a very good thing if we can produce a deal, that you sign it.’” Trump said. “Because Russia is much bigger and much stronger, Russia is chugging forward. It’s a big, strong country.”
Trump said he wanted a deal because of the amount of funding that was handed to Ukraine during former President Joe Biden’s time in office.
“They loaned the money, and Biden handed them $350 billion between cash and military equipment,” Trump said. “$350 billion and we have nothing, and I felt very foolish being the head of a country where Europe gets their money back – it’s a much smaller amount – and we get nothing.”
Trump added that the deal that was made between himself and Zelenskyy should grab most, if not more of the money that the U.S. has given in aide, back from Ukraine.
“So, I went to them, and I said ‘look, we’ve got the get rare earth’, they have got great rare earth, meaning certain minerals, materials, they have things that a lot of places don’t have,” Trump said. “It’s a big asset that they have, and we made a deal today, you know, where we get much more in theory than the $350 billion.”
Trump noted that he wants to put an end to the war that happened under Biden’s watch.
“But I wanted to be protective, I didn’t want to be out there and look foolish. And this is not my war, this is Biden’s war, I’m just trying to stop it. The reason I want is stop is they’re losing 5,000 young soldiers every single week on average,” Trump said. “Russian and Ukrainians, they’re not American, but they’re human beings and it’s so sad to see it. So, I want to stop the war.”
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