Trump compares Ukraine-Russia war to kids’ brawl: ‘Sometimes you’re better off letting them fight’
CNN
Trump appeared to take a more laissez-faire posture toward the Ukraine-Russia war in comments Thursday.
For months, President Donald Trump has voiced varying degrees of optimism that he – and only he – will be able to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. But halting progress, ever-more deadly drone attacks and unmoving negotiating positions seem to have taken their toll. On Thursday, Trump used a striking analogy to concede the warfare was nowhere near over, and that he did not, at that moment, feel it was best to intervene. “Sometimes you see two young children fighting like crazy,” Trump said in the Oval Office, with his German counterpart Friedrich Merz looking on silently. “They hate each other, and they’re fighting in a park, and you try and pull them apart. They don’t want to be pulled. Sometimes you’re better off letting them fight for a while and then pulling them apart.” In this comparison — which Trump said he delivered directly to Russian President Vladimir Putin during their 75-minute phone call Wednesday — Trump is acting not as the man in the middle but as a referee letting an altercation play out. “You see it in hockey. You see it in sports. The referees let them go for a couple of seconds,” he said. “Let them go for a little while before you pull them apart.” It was a frank admission for Trump, the verbal equivalent of throwing up his hands at a problem he cannot solve.
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