Donald Trump took aim at Volodymyr Zelenskyy for not negotiating with Russia to end the war in Ukraine, arguing that even the “worst deal” would be better than the current levels of death and destruction.
Speaking at a campaign rally in North Carolina on Wednesday, Trump said Ukraine would never be able to replace “many dead people” or fully restore the towns and cities destroyed in the conflict.
“Those cities are gone. They’re gone, and we continue to give billions of dollars to a man who refused to make a deal, Zelenskyy. There was no deal that he could have made that wouldn’t have been better than the situation you have right now” Trump told supporters.
“You have a country that has been obliterated, not possible to be rebuilt. It’ll take hundreds of years to rebuild it, there’s not enough money to rebuild it if the whole world got together.”
“If they made a bad deal, it would have been much better."
“They would have given up a little bit, and everybody would be living and every building would be built and every tower would be ageing for another 2,000 years.”
He also accused Zelenskyy of “making nasty little disparaging remarks” about him. This was a reference to a recent interview in The New Yorker, where the Ukrainian president said Trump “doesn’t really know how to stop the war, even if he thinks he does.”
Zelenskyy also labeled Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, as “too radical” after the Ohio senator suggested that “everything is going to be on the table” when asked whether Kyiv should cede land for a ceasefire.
Trump has repeatedly claimed he would end the war quickly if elected, but has provided few specifics. In a recent interview on the Lex Fridman Podcast, Trump said he had a “very exacting plan” for resolving the conflict but could not share details before putting it into action.
"I have a very exacting plan how to stop Ukraine and Russia, And I have a certain idea -- maybe not a plan, but an idea," he said in an interview.
"But I can't give you those plans, because if I give you those plans, I'm not going to be able to use them, they'll be very unsuccessful. You know, part of it's surprise, right?"
