Donald Trump has once again offered his insight on last week’s historic prisoner swap – and heaped praise on Vladimir Putin.
A total of 24 prisoners were exchanged last week and returned to their home countries in a landmark deal between Russia and a collection of Western countries – the US, Germany, Norway, Poland and Slovenia.
The swap was the largest of its kind since the end of the Cold War.
It meant Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich could be returned to the States, while Germany had to free the Russian assassin, Vadim Kraskiov.
But Trump, the former US president and current Republican Party nominee, described the pivotal moment – seen as a moment of triumph for the outgoing Biden administration – as “bad” last week.
He said the US negotiators “are always an embarrassment to us” and that the States “never make good deals, at anything”.
Yet, Trump put a slightly different spin on prisoner swap over the weekend.
According to POLITICO, told attendees at a rally in Atlanta, Georgia that Putin “had made another great deal.”
He said: “I’d like to congratulate Vladimir Putin for having made yet another great deal.
“Did you see the deal we made?”
He maintained it was terrible for the US and led to the release of “some of the greatest killers” in the world, adding: “We got our people back, but boy did we make some horrible, horrible deals.
“It’s nice to say we got them back, but does that set a bad precedent?”
Trump also implied on Saturday that the prisoner deals included payments to Moscow, adding he had “never paid anything” when he oversaw the release of “59 hostages” when he was in office.
However, Biden’s team has confirmed no money was exchanged in the prisoner swap, and neither were any sanctions loosened.
The ex-president has often spoken highly of his special relationship with Putin, once saying that the Russian premier would return Gershkovich to the US if Trump was in the White House again.
He claimed Putin would do that just for him,“but not for anyone else”.
But, it’s not clear if that is a mutual affection.
Putin said in February would prefer Joe Biden to be in the White House than Trump because he is “more predictable” as a politician.
Biden recently dropped out of the race for the White House and has been officially replaced by his vice president Kamala Harris as the Democrats’ nominee.