Fox News anchor Jacqui Heinrich confronted Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) Sunday about Donald Trump congratulating Vladimir Putin on last week’s major prisoner swap involving multiple nations.
Last week, more than a dozen U.S. prisoners were released by the Kremlin, including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, in the largest prisoner exchange between the East and West since the Cold War.
Trump, who repeatedly bashed President Joe Biden for not being able to bring back the U.S. citizens imprisoned in Russia, attacked the deal and said it “released some of the greatest killers in the world” back to Putin and Russia.
Heinrich confronted Graham about how the deal was similar to those undertaken during the Trump administration, asking how they were “any different” from what Biden’s administration did.
Graham echoed Trump’s criticism that the deal has “released killers and thugs all over the world in Western custody. You know, Russia charges Americans for crimes they didn’t commit foreign nationals, a crime they didn’t commit. They asked for their people to be released who were spies and thugs and killers — it’s completely different.
HEINRICH: Senator, do you believe that this deal increased Putin’s leverage over the West?
GRAHAM: Oh, absolutely. I mean, we’ve got a cycle here. You have trumped-up charges against Americans. You accuse them of things they didn’t do. You put them in jail, and you only release them when we have to release Russian spies and killers. Yeah. This cycle needs to stop. Absolutely.
You know, all I can say is I don’t think Russia would’ve invaded Ukraine on Trump’s watch, And I don’t think we’d have the Middle East on fire if Trump were still president. Iran is running wild. So the source of all these problems is weakness. People believe America’s weak, and they’re taking advantage of us.
HEINRICH: Senator, in October of 2020, though, Trump facilitated the release of 250 Houthi rebels from Yemen in exchange for two Americans and the remains of a third that were held in Yemen by Iranian-backed militants. So how is that any different than what President Biden did this week?
GRAHAM: Well, what we’ve done is we’ve released killers and thugs all over the world in Western custody. And we’ve, you know, Russia charges Americans for crimes they didn’t commit. Foreign nationals for crimes they didn’t commit. They asked for their people to be released who were spies and thugs and killers — it’s completely different.
So what I would say about the Houthis, when President Trump was president, not one missile was fired at American ships in the Red Sea. When Trump was president, Israel was not attacked, killing more Jews than any time since the Holocaust. When President Trump was president, Russia did not invade Ukraine. When President Trump was president, you didn’t have enough fentanyl coming across the border to kill everybody in the entire world. There’s a lot of differences between the Trump presidency, Biden and Harris.
Watch the clip above via Fox News.
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