Political commentator Bill O’Reilly weighed in Monday on President Trump’s recent decision to loosen sanctions on Russia, arguing the president sees Russian President Vladimir Putin through a different lens than many of his critics.
NewsNation’s Leland Vittert asked O’Reilly how his own view of Putin differs from the president’s. O’Reilly said Trump “looks at Putin in a different way.”
The former Fox News host pointed back to his 2017 interview with Trump. During that exchange, O’Reilly told the president, “Putin’s a killer.” Trump fired back, “There are a lot of killers.”
“So Trump is going to deal with you even if you’re a killer,” O’Reilly told Vittert. “He deals with Xi in China, and China commits all kinds of human rights violations.”
O’Reilly added that Trump “doesn’t have a line” the way some of his predecessors did.
His remarks come as the administration’s approach to Moscow faces scrutiny from both Capitol Hill and Kyiv.
Over the past several weeks, the Trump administration lifted sanctions on Russian diesel. It also waived sanctions on Russia just days before they were set to be imposed under a newly signed sanctions package.
Those moves drew criticism from members of Congress on both sides of the aisle. They also prompted pushback from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, whose country has been locked in a years-long war with Russia.
On Tuesday morning, Zelensky said he had spoken with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and described the call as a “substantive conversation.” The two discussed ballistic missile interceptors, early warnings for Russian attacks and access to Starlink satellites.
Following the call, Rubio told reporters there was “nothing being deliberately denied to Ukraine.”
“It’s simply a balance between our obligations to other partners, and frankly, our own standards and requirements for our own facilities as well,” Rubio continued.
One day earlier, Trump signaled he was open to a trilateral meeting with Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping. The president’s comment followed a report from The Wall Street Journal that Putin had proposed a three-way meeting with China to discuss the war in Ukraine.
Speaking to reporters Monday, Trump said he would not want to discuss Ukraine as much at such a meeting, “because Russia, frankly, has been doing fine on Ukraine.”
Instead, the president said he wanted the focus of the talks to center on “weapons and denuclearization.”
The idea drew a sharp rebuke from Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha. In a statement shared on social media, Sybiha condemned the meeting plans and called for Ukraine to be included in the talks.
“A trilateral meeting between the leaders of Ukraine, the U.S. and Russia could help end the war sooner,” Sybiha wrote. “A trilateral meeting between the leaders of Russia, China and the U.S. would do only the opposite: encourage Putin to continue this war.”
