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Fox News host Shannon Bream confronted Senator Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, on Sunday about reports that former President Donald Trump may give Russian President Vladimir Putin what he wants in Russia's war with Ukraine.
Bream said to Cotton, a Trump ally and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, on Fox News Sunday, "I want to bring this up because there were reports that what [former] President Trump plans to do to end that conflict is potentially push Ukraine to give up Crimea, parts of Donbas."
She asked: "If that is the plan, do you agree with that strategy? And would that be rewarding Putin in order to wrap this thing up in the way that he intended to start it and take some of that territory. Is that just giving him what he wanted?"
Cotton responded: "[Former] President Trump and his campaign has said that any reports of plans like that are not authorized, that they're not coming from the [former] president himself."
Newsweek has reached out to Cotton's office via phone and Trump's spokesperson, Steven Cheung, via email for comment.
In April, The Washington Post cited unnamed sources with knowledge of the matter in its report that Trump, if reelected in November, will push Ukraine to permanently cede the occupied Crimean Peninsula—seized by Russia in 2014—and the entire eastern Donbas region consisting of Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts to Moscow in exchange for a peace deal.
Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller told the New York Post at the time, "The whole thing is fake news from The Washington Post. They're just making it up."
The Kremlin press office—headed by Putin's spokesperson Dmitry Peskov—previously told Newsweek in a statement that it was aware of the speculation as to Trump's intentions in Ukraine.
"We have seen reports on this, but so far, no initiatives have been announced by Donald Trump," Peskov's office said. "Therefore, it is impossible to make estimates."
During a previous appearance on The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show podcast, Trump suggested that Ukraine could have ceded Crimea to Russia, according to a Newsweek report from August 2022.
"They could have given up Crimea. They could have done something with NATO, 'Okay, we're not gonna join NATO,' and you'd have a country, because I believe Putin wanted to make a deal," Trump said. Ukraine hopes to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, but has yet to become a member.
Trump also said on the podcast that Russia's invasion of Ukraine would have "never happened" if he were still president.
On Sunday, Cotton told Bream that Trump "has said that he strongly supports Ukraine's strength and survival. He had a strong relationship when he was in office with [Ukrainian] President [Volodymyr] Zelensky. [Former] President Trump is the one that provided Ukraine the weapons they needed to fend off this Russian invasion that happened, in large part because of Joe Biden's weakness."
He continued: "I don't think [former] President Trump wants to prejudge what the situation will be come January, nor do I, in part, because we have no idea how much worse [President] Joe Biden can screw things up. We have to judge the circumstances as they exist next year when he returns to office. And hopefully, when we have a Republican majority in Congress as well to make decisions about what best protects America's interests and the interest of our allies and partners."
Zelensky and Biden have been strong allies since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. On Friday, before a bilateral meeting with Biden in Paris, Zelenksy thanked the president and his administration for their "significant support" during the war. In April, Biden signed a foreign aid package into law that includes nearly $61 billion in aid to Ukraine.
Meanwhile in February, Zelensky accused Trump of favoring Russia over Ukraine, however Trump has never made such a statement.
He told CNN's Kaitlan Collins at the time that he "can't understand how Donald Trump can be on the side of Putin," adding that "it's unbelievable."
The Ukrainian president also said that the former president "doesn't know Putin."
"I know he met him...but he never fought with Putin," Zelensky said. "I don't think he understands that Putin will never stop."
While Trump praised Putin as a "genius" in February 2022 for the Ukraine invasion, U.S.-Russia relations were somewhat tense during his time in the White House. The administration imposed a raft of sanctions on Moscow during Trump's term, supplied lethal assistance to Ukraine, tightened the screws on Russian partners in China and Iran, and expelled Russian spies from the U.S.
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About the writer
Rachel Dobkin is a Newsweek reporter based in New York. Her focus is reporting on politics. Rachel joined Newsweek in ... Read more