Former President Donald Trump came out publicly with his opinion of President Biden’s “crazy and bad” prisoner exchange of the Merchant of Death for a WNBA player while comparing it to a similar opportunity when he was president.
When traveling into Russia, basketball player Brittney Griner was arrested for entering the country with drugs and to secure her release, President Biden exchanged notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout. Meanwhile a former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan still remains incarcerated by Russia and was not part of the deal approved by Biden.
In 2018, Whelan was arrested in Russia and convicted of espionage in 2020, being held captive much longer than Griner. According to Trump, while in office he passed on the deal of exchanging the arms dealer.
In a truth social post Trump said, “I turned down a deal with Russia for a one on one swap of the so-called Merchant of Death for Paul Whelan. I wouldn’t have made the deal for a hundred people in exchange for someone that has killed untold numbers of people with his arms deals.”
“I would have gotten Paul out, however, just as I did with a record number of other hostages,” Trump said. “The deal for Griner is crazy and bad. The taking wouldn’t have even happened during my Administration, but if it did, I would have gotten her out , fast!”
In an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” former National Security Council senior director for Russian Affairs, Fiona Hill, corroborated Trump’s claims of rejecting a deal with Russia.
“I also have to say here that President Trump wasn’t especially interested in engaging in that swap for Paul Whelan,” she said. “He was not particularly interested in Paul’s case in the way that one would have thought he would be,” regarding an American being held captive in a foreign country.
Hill also noted, “we have to be mindful of the fact that when governments do this, they’re doing it for trading purposes, but they’re also doing it to mess about in our politics. And we’re falling every single time for this–the more that we fight with each other, the more that we play into their hands. And we also risk other Americans being taken, because it’s a way of influencing our domestic politics.”