00:00President Trump has long ruminated that perhaps Putin is stringing me along a bit here because
00:06we have these great conversations. And then I talk to my wife and Melania says, what are you
00:12talking about? Russia just bombed Kiev or bombed a city. The bombs are dropping. Putin's all talk
00:17and isn't really acting in the same way that he's talking to you. I mean, do you get the sense
00:23based on what we know about the summit so far that Putin will string Trump along on Friday?
00:30Putin will absolutely attempt to string Trump along. That will be his goal in these talks.
00:38And the question is whether he can succeed at continuing to string him along. And you're
00:44right. Actually, I wrote a column about exactly this for The Washington Times. Melania sees
00:48through Putin. Why? I think in part because Melania was born in a communist country and
00:54understands these people. And Melania knows such things as what Putin has done in stealing
01:00Ukrainian children and brainwashing them so they think of themselves as Russians, not Ukrainian.
01:05And she finds that just dreadful as well she should. And so, yes, she had. So, as you say,
01:12and Trump has recounted this on a couple of occasions, he'd think he had a good conversation
01:17and a productive conversation with Putin. And she'd say, no, you didn't. And by the way,
01:23we at FDD, I can show you a chart we did where pretty much every time there was one of these
01:28good conversations between Putin and Trump, the next night, residential apartment buildings,
01:35hospitals, kindergartens would be attacked by Putin, almost like clockwork.
01:41To that point, then, to that trend that's alarming on Saturday night, do you think that's going to
01:46happen? Oh, it absolutely could. It depends on unless they come out with a ceasefire, unless Trump
01:55gets what he wants, which is a good thing to want, a cessation of facilities, a ceasefire, a pause,
02:01doesn't mean that they won't go back to fighting. If he doesn't get that, I absolutely expect Putin
02:06will say, okay, you've made me angry and I'm going to take out my anger on Saturday and I'm going to do
02:12it by killing Ukrainian men, women, and children. Again, his aerial attacks are not even aimed at the
02:18soldiers. They're aimed mostly at civilians. This is absolutely, I mean, it's obviously a war crime.
02:26It's obviously outrageous. It obviously should not go unanswered. Putin is trying to wipe,
02:32to subjugate Ukrainians and wipe a neighboring country, a country that wants to be part of
02:40Europe and wants to be part of the free world, the fledgling democracy. I've been there when I've
02:46been an election monitor over there. They have political parties. They have free press. It's not
02:51a perfect country. It's a young country. They're doing, they, they have want a future where they
02:56are not ruled by essentially a dictator, a czar in the Kremlin.
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