Trump on whether Putin is a humanitarian: he doesn’t want to ‘upset an apple cart’

Asked whether Vladimir Putin is a humanitarian, the president of the United States weighed his options and picked fruit.

Some setup. That morning in St. Petersburg, Steve Witkoff thanked Putin for freeing Stephen Hubbard and told him, “you are a humanitarian also, sir, and I salute that.” At the cybercrime roundtable a reporter asked whether Trump would describe him that way. Trump: “Well, I guess you have, could say, for that particular purpose, for the purpose of allowing a man who was thinking he was going to be in prison for life out. But, you know, I wouldn’t say anything one way or the other.” Prison for life, as Hubbard feared it. The sentence, CBS and the BBC report, was almost seven years.

Then, in the same answer, a detour to Iran: “we have been pretty happy with Russia that they have not gotten involved with Iran,” and “Russia and China have not participated or participated in a much smaller way than they could have.” CNN, citing sources, reported in March that Russia was feeding Iran intelligence on U.S. military targets. In September it reported that data from Chinese groups was sharpening Iran’s strikes on U.S. sites. Pretty happy, he says.

About a minute after “one way or the other,” he got to the point: “So the last thing I want to do is upset an apple cart where we’re getting close to settling a war.” So Putin isn’t a humanitarian and isn’t not one. He’s an apple cart, and you leave the cart alone.