Former White House national security adviser John Bolton suggested Friday that U.S. support for Ukraine will likely dwindle if former President Trump is elected in November, saying “It’s toast.”
His comments came after Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met briefly at Trump Tower in New York City. During the visit, the former president claimed he could quickly broker a deal to end the Russia-Ukraine war.
Asked by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins why the two met, Bolton pointed to “political reasons.”
“I think for political reasons. I think he knew that obviously Zelensky had been in Washington. He had met with President Biden. He had met with Vice President Harris,” Bolton told Collins, the host of “The Source,” in an interview. “I think it’s designed, to calm the nerves of some Republicans … who despise Trump and don’t want to vote for him but are afraid of the radicalism of the Democratic Party, and they’re rationalizing, in their own minds.”
“Surely Trump won’t sell out Ukraine,” he continued. “So, that this is the kind of picture that helps convince them that indeed, Trump won’t be so bad.”
Bolton added, “I’d just like to break that bubble, because I think it’s, in terms of American support for Ukraine, if Trump wins, I think it’s toast.”
Trump, following his meeting with the Ukrainian president and despite his deep skepticism of continued aid to the country, said it was “an honor” to speak with Zelensky. He lauded the relationship between the two leaders, and said he would work with Ukraine and Russia to “get this settled.”
“We’re going to work very much with both parties to try and get this settled,” Trump said Friday. “I think that we can work out something that’s good for both sides. It’s time. By the way, the president [Zelensky] knows that too. He wants to get something done. He doesn’t want to do this.”
The former president signaled that Russian President Vladimir Putin would also like to stop the war. Asked if he agrees, Bolton said “absolutely.”
“Look, I think Putin knows that he has, although he’s doubled the amount of territory in Ukraine that Russia controls, since 2014, they have paid a high price for it,” he said Friday. “He’d like to … draw a line under this, so he can help recover the Russian economy, convince the Europeans to buy natural gas from Russia again, and re-equip and retrain his army, so that he can go after Ukraine again, in a few years.”
“And that is exactly what he will do if there’s a cease-fire, along the lines Trump is talking about,” Bolton added.
Zelensky’s visit with Trump came a day after he was welcomed to the White House by President Biden and Vice President Harris. During the meeting in Washington, which followed Biden’s announcement of an estimated $8 billion aid package for Ukraine, he laid out his “victory plan” for ending the nearly-three-year war.
The Ukrainian leader also met with lawmakers on Capitol Hill.