Trump congratulates Putin over deal that brought Evan Gershkovich home 3AUG24

IT is disgraceful how donald drumpf / trump congratulated and celebrated putin instead of celebrating the homecoming of Americans who had been held hostage in Russia and Belarus (we all know he is too narcissistic to congratulate the Biden-Harris administration) and all the American as well as German, Norwegian, Slovenian and Polish officials who worked to make this prisoner exchange happen. From the Washington Post.....

Trump congratulates Putin over deal that brought Evan Gershkovich home

Trump also seemed to lash out at the deal after it was trumpeted Thursday by President Biden and Vice President Harris, who met the freed prisoners in an emotional ceremony.

Evan Gershkovich hugs his mother, Ella Milman, after returning to the United States from detention in Russia on Thursday. President Biden and Vice President Harris met the released prisoners upon their return at Joint Base Andrews. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)

Updated August 3, 2024 at 11:31 p.m. EDT|Published August 3, 2024 at 9:57 p.m. EDT

By Josh Dawsey

Josh Dawsey is a political enterprise and investigations reporter for The Washington Post. He joined the paper in 2017 and previously covered the White House. Before that, he covered the White House for Politico, and New York City Hall and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for the Wall Street Journal. Twitter

ATLANTA — Former president Donald Trump congratulated Russian President Vladimir Putin over a prisoner swap that took place this week, saying the Russian strongman had outsmarted U.S. officials as part of the largest such deal since the end of the Cold War.

At a rally here on Saturday, Trump did not mention any of the American prisoners who were released in the deal — including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was imprisoned for more than a year on charges the U.S. government has denounced as fabricated. In his previous comments on the deal, Trump has not mentioned any of the prisoners by name either, only criticized the U.S. government.

“I’d like to congratulate Vladimir Putin for having made yet another great deal. … We have 59 hostages; I never paid anything. … Boy, we make some horrible, horrible deals. It’s nice to say we got ’em back, but does that set a bad precedent?” Trump said.

He did not mention any of the U.S. officials who worked on the deal for months.

In fact, Trump authorized an agreement to pay $2 million to North Korea for medical bills in the release of Otto Warmbier, the comatose University of Virginia student sent home from Pyongyang in 2017, The Washington Post reported. Trump claimed the bill was never paid. Warmbier died soon after his return.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan said this week that no money changed hands in the latest prisoner swap.

Trump had been reluctant to speak about Gershkovich for about the first year of the reporter’s detention but finally called for his release in May. The former president has repeatedly bragged about his close relationship with Putin, but also says that Putin respects him and would have never invaded Ukraine if Trump was president.

On several public occasions in recent months, Trump has said he would get Gershkovich released as soon as he was elected in November, and Putin would do it “for me, but not anyone else.”

Trump seemed to lash out at the deal Thursday after it was trumpeted by President Biden and Vice President Harris, who met the prisoners at Joint Base Andrews in an emotional ceremony.

“Just curious because we never make good deals, at anything, but especially hostage swaps. Our ‘negotiators’ are always an embarrassment to us!” he said in a Truth Social post on Thursday.

Gershkovich was among 24 people freed in an exchange of prisoners involving seven countries — Russia and Belarus on one side, and the United States, Germany, Slovenia, Poland and Norway on the other. On the Russian side, 16 prisoners were released, including one who had been imprisoned in Belarus. German and American citizens and Russian dissidents were among the group, the majority of whom were flown to Germany. Russia received eight people in return, including assassin Vadim Krasikov, who had been imprisoned by Germany, and two hackers and an alleged smuggler with intelligence links.