President Donald Trump, in an interview with “Special Report” anchor Bret Baier talked about dealing with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky following his foreign policy trip to the Middle East.

BRET BAIER, FOX NEWS: I haven’t seen you get personal. On True Social, you said, “Vladimir, STOP.” He hasn’t stopped. And you had once said that maybe you need to look at other things, like sanctions or banking, because maybe they need to be pressured in a different way. And do you think that it’s time? PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I don’t want to see 5,000 people — you know, outside of the money, which is a big deal, but the money is the money. The money we can make up. I can make up the money on one trip like this. Okay? I mean, think of it. This trip, I made 12 times the money that we’re talking about. I made that money in a few days. I’ve always been good with money. BAIER: But it’s not about the money, it’s about pressuring Putin, right? TRUMP: No, but I’ve always been good with money. I make money. I made in four days, I made 12 times what we spent in Ukraine. So the money is the money. What bothered me, I hated to see the way it was, you know, excuse me, pissed away. I hated to see that checks were set for $ 60 billion. Every time Zelensky, I think he’s the greatest salesman in the world, far better than me. Zelensky, he comes to Washington, he walks out with $ 100 billion every time he came. $ 100 billion, $ 100 billion. Now his abilities were shrinking because the last time he only got $ 60 billion. But Congress is very upset about it. You know, they’re saying, where is all this money going? Where? I’m focused on Putin. And we sent checks. We didn’t only send quid, we sent just checks. We sent just cash. Where is it? The Europeans have been very badly hurt by this. They spent a lot of money also. They spent $ 100 billion, we spent $ 350. It shouldn’t be that. It should have been the other way around. But are you going to put the screws to Putin? Wait, they have not been treated right by anybody. This is a war that they’re, you know, spending a lot of money on. We’ve been treated worse than them because we had a very stupid person as a president. And if I can solve that problem, and it’s a bad problem, because I will tell you, Putin, it was the apple of his eye. He never would have done it if I were president. Never, ever would have done it, 100%. I think you even, most people, actually even Democrats say that it wouldn’t have happened. But we inherited a mess, okay? I think it’s going to get solved. But you know that Putin wanted the whole thing. He didn’t want a piece. He didn’t want a chunk. He wanted the whole thing. Somebody said, well, what do we get out of it in terms of, let’s say, Ukraine? You know what they get out of it? A large portion of the country.

RealClearPolitics Videos