President Donald Trump downplayed concerns about Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying Americans should “spend less time worrying” about the autocratic leader.
Trump made the remark in a social media post Sunday, seemingly in reply to H.R. McMaster, who served as Trump’s national security adviser for a year during his first administration.
Two days earlier, McMaster accused Trump and Vice President JD Vance of “coddling Putin” after the two berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office for what they saw as insufficient gratitude for U.S. assistance amid his country’s defense against an ongoing Russian invasion.
After writing that McMaster is a “A WEAK AND TOTALLY INEFFECTIVE LOSER,” Trump immediately posted a follow-up on his Truth Social platform suggesting Putin was of limited concern.
“We should spend less time worrying about Putin, and more time worrying about migrant rape gangs, drug lords, murderers, and people from mental institutions entering our Country,” he wrote. “So that we don’t end up like Europe!”
Trump had previously lashed out against McMaster in 2018, after the retired retired U.S. Army lieutenant general said it was “incontrovertible” that Putin’s Kremlin interfered in the 2016 presidential election, a view shared by U.S. intelligence agencies, which believe Russia has continued its efforts to subvert American democracy.
On Monday, Trump gloated in another social media post that he is “the only President who gave none of Ukraine’s land to Putin’s Russia.”
In fact, no president in American history has given any Ukrainian territory to Russia, but Trump’s National Security Advisor Mike Waltz has suggested the war-torn country will need to concede territory to its belligerent neighbor.
Trump was likely referring to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which Putin ordered in 2022 during the Biden administration.
Meanwhile, leaders from Europe and Canada rallied around Zelensky in London on Sunday at a “once-in-a-generation” emergency summit that U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said showed they were “doubling down” on support for Ukraine in its self-defense against Putin.
Starmer said he and French President Emmanuel Macron were working to repair relations between Washington and Kyiv after Trump’s outburst, and that they and “possibly one or two others” hope to prepare a ceasefire plan amenable to Ukraine that they can bring to Trump.
Trump’s increasingly friendly posture toward Putin has set off alarm bells in European capitals, as well as among members of the Democratic opposition.
“The White House has become an arm of the Kremlin,” said Sen. Chris Murphy during a televised interview Sunday.
Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s top spokesperson, seemed to revel in the seismic shift in America’s approach to Russia and its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, saying Trump’s foreign policy “largely aligns with our vision.”
Most of Trump’s Republican Party has fallen in line and praised the president for his heel turn. Sen. Lindsey Graham, who had for years been a vocal champion of the Ukrainian cause, immediately called on Zelensky to resign after his “utter disaster” of an Oval Office meeting with Trump.
Zelensky told journalists in London on Sunday: “The president of Ukraine will not be chosen in Lindsey Graham’s house.”
