At a Georgia rally on Saturday, Donald Trump congratulated Russian dictator Vladimir Putin for the historic prisoner exchange arranged by President Joe Biden that freed 16 people wrongfully imprisoned in Russia, including American journalist Evan Gershkovich.
Trump also disparaged the deal as inferior to deals he made, exaggerating the number of prisoners freed while he was president, and lying both about about how they were freed and about the terms of Biden’s deal.
“By the way, I’d like to congratulate Vladimir Putin for having made yet another great deal,” Trump said. “Did you see the deal we made? Now look, we want to get people in. We got 59 hostages — I never paid anything.”
“They released some of the greatest killers anywhere in the world,” Trump continued. “Some of the most evil killers they got. And we got our people back, but boy, we made some horrible, horrible deals. And it’s nice to say we got them back, but does that set a bad precedent?”
Trump’s claim about the number of prisoners he freed has fluctuated somewhat — he’s previous claimed to have freed 58 prisoners. While there were prisoners held in other countries that were freed during the Trump administration, the number isn’t known for certain but appears to be less than that number.
In addition, Trump’s claim that he “never paid anything” is apparently true in terms of money, but the implication Biden did pay money for his historic deal is a lie. No money was paid for the released prisoners according to all reporting on that deal. Meanwhile, in one 2020 deal Trump’s administration made with Iran to free two U.S. prisoners, more than 200 Houthi militants held in Oman were freed and permitted to return to Yemen.
As for Biden’s deal, Americans freed in the hostage exchange included both Gershkovich, who was arrested in March of last year on espionage charges, and Paul Whelan, a former Marine imprisoned since 2018 who was also accused and convicted of espionage.
U.S. officials have said the espionage claims against both men are false. They were each sentenced to 16 years in prison. Two other journalists were released in the prisoner swap: Alsu Kurmasheva and Vladimir Kara-Murza.
The release included 16 prisoners freed from Russia, including five Germans and seven Russian citizens being held as political prisoners. President Joe Biden thanked Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Norway and Turkey for helping with the multi-country prisoner swap. He did not praise Putin in his remarks.
Trump pivoted from praising Putin and criticizing the hostage deal to attacking his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. “Harris has the most ultra-left-wing agenda of any presidential candidate ever in history,” Trump claimed. “She is considered more left-wing then Crazy Bernie Sanders. She is worse than Bernie.”
The Republican presidential nominee went on to attack Harris’ intelligence. She graduated from Howard University, earned a law degree and served as California’s attorney general and a senator before taking office as Biden’s vice president.
“She happens to be really a low IQ individual,” Trump said in his attack. “She has a very low IQ. We don’t need a low IQ.”
“President Xi of China said, ‘oh good, we have another one, a low-IQ individual,’” Trump said, taking a sideswipe at Biden. “They love dealing with low IQ people, and they got them here. I tell you, we got them all.”
“She is terrible. I think she is worse than him,” Trump added, continuing on with attacks on both Harris and Biden. “By the way, they really took it away from the guy, right? I don’t feel sorry for him, because he’s a bad guy.”
Making a half-joke about Biden’s perceived mental decline, Trump added, “They did a coup, he just doesn’t know it.”