Moments after declaring that the U.S. “gave nothing” to Russia in exchange for the release of imprisoned American Stephen Hubbard, Donald Trump revealed that we did, in fact, give something.
“So we appreciate the fact that we were able to get him. We gave nothing in exchange, which is very rare. We never give anything in exchange,” said Trump during a roundtable at the White House Wednesday.
But just moments later, Trump seemed to refer to bipartisan blowback he had faced earlier this month for striking a diesel deal with Russia and dropping America’s economic sanctions against the global superpower.
“I was in the midst of getting Stephen out of Russia and, if we did what these foolish people wanted me to do, he wouldn’t be coming out right now. He’d be in there for another 20 years,” Trump said. “So the last thing I was going to do was break up that.”
Hubbard, a retired American teacher, had lived in Ukraine for years before he was captured by Russia in the early weeks of the war. Two years later in 2024, he was convicted by a Russian court of serving as a mercenary. Hubbard was released early Wednesday after nearly five cumulative years in detention.
The 74-year-old Michigander’s release was followed by a jarringly obsequious meeting between U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Russian President Vladimir Putin, during which Witkoff referred to the notoriously tyrannical Russian leader as a “humanitarian.”
“You talk so much about my president, President Trump, being a humanitarian,” Witkoff told Putin Wednesday, responding to Hubbard’s release. “You are a humanitarian also, sir, and I salute that, I commend you, and I thank you again.”
Even Republicans had a hard time standing by the Trump envoy’s messaging. Reacting to a video of the exchange on X, North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis slammed Witkoff’s descriptor as an “embarrassing and outrageous thing to say.”
“You should go back to Ukraine and ask the families of the children Putin has kidnapped and murdered whether they agree your friend Putin is a ‘humanitarian,’” Tillis wrote.
Senator John Cornyn of Texas commented that Putin is a “stone cold killer.”
But Trump wasn’t willing to join the choir. When asked to respond to Witkoff’s exchange, Trump told reporters that he didn’t want to “upset an apple cart where we’re getting close to settling a war.”