Sen. JD Vance Tells Jake Tapper It’s ‘Absurd’ to Think ‘Donald Trump Loves Putin’ | Video

Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance joined Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday and came out swinging in favor of Donald Trump. He opened with a response to Sen. John Fetterman’s comment that he doesn’t “understand why Donald Trump seems to love Putin as well.”

Vance told Tapper, “Well, first, Jake, the idea that Putin loves Donald Trump or Donald Trump loves Putin is absolutely absurd. Putin was actually pretty well-behaved during the Trump administration — he invaded another country during the Biden administration.”

“So for these guys to say that Putin prefers Donald Trump completely ignores the underlying realities on the ground here,” Vance continued. “We actually had some real security deterrence when Donald Trump was president.”

The assertion is “preposterous,” Vance added. “Reality shows Putin didn’t like when Donald Trump was president and was a lot better behaved. And I think to accuse Donald Trump of being pro-Putin completely ignores the reality on the ground.”

After Tapper argued that perhaps Putin was able to make headway with Trump in a way that he couldn’t with other presidents and therefore “didn’t need to be this hostile,” Vance pushed back. “I don’t think that’s right, Jake. I think Donald Trump is, he engaged in strategic deterrence.”

“You have to negotiate sometimes even with bad people, even with your enemies, but you have to deter those people,” Vance continued.

Trump has had made plenty of positive comments about Putin over the years, such as his own 2013 tweet in which he wondered if he could become best friends with Putin. Trump wrote at the time, “Do you think Putin will be going to The Miss Universe Pageant in November in Moscow — if so, will he become my new best friend?”

Tapper turned the conversation to Vance’s op-ed on Ukraine published Friday in the New York Times. Vance wrote that the biggest obstacle facing Ukraine is math — and specifically, “Ukraine needs more soldiers than it can field, even with draconian conscription policies. And it needs more material than the United States can provide. This reality must inform any future Ukraine policy, from further congressional aid to the diplomatic course set by the president.”

Response to the op-ed has largely been that it seemed Vance is advocating for Ukraine to surrender to Russia, because the necessary math to victory isn’t there, but he told Tapper that this take isn’t accurate. Vance insisted that “my solution to the problem is to rebuild our own country” and added, “The reason that we’re in this position, Jake, is because we’re stretched way too thin.We’re stretched way too thin … the number of weapons systems that we need, the Ukraine needs, that Taiwan needs, that Israel needs, and we can’t do all of these things at once.”

Watch the interview with J.D. Vance in the video above.

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