Conservative attorney George Conway ridiculed Donald Trump on Tuesday for only now appearing to realize that Russian President Vladimir Putin has been manipulating him for years.
“There are hundreds, if not thousands, of reasons to believe that @realDonaldTrump is a fool,” Conway posted on X, the Elon Musk-owned platform formerly known as Twitter.
Then the lawyer zinged: “But the fact that it took almost a decade for him to figure out that Putin has been playing him for one is as good as any.”
Conway, a longtime critic of Trump despite his ex-wife Kellyanne Conway’s ties to the president, was commenting on footage of Trump voicing his frustration over stalled efforts to broker peace in Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Trump said the ongoing conflict, which Russia launched in 2022, should “never” have happened and lamented how “a lot of people are dying.”
The president also appeared to admit he’d misjudged Putin, saying: “We get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth. He’s very nice all the time but it turns out to be meaningless.”
Trump, who has long expressed his admiration for Putin, said he is now examining potential additional sanctions on Russia and that a bill doing just that, which has been introduced by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), is “an option.”