In homage to a past point of pressure on Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President Donald Trump joked about the possibility of suspending U.S. elections during wartime.
"You say during the war you can't have elections?" Trump said to Zelenskyy during a joint Oval Office press availability Monday. "Let me just say, 3 1/2 years from now — so you mean if we happen to be in a war with somebody, no more elections?
"I wonder what the fake news will say."
Zelenskyy laughed at Trump's suggestion.
"You like this idea," Zelenskyy said, smiling and laughing in a marked change in demeanor from his past visit with Trump in the Oval Office in February.
Trump referred to Zelenskyy as a "Dictator without Elections" in a Truth Social post Feb. 19, just a week before the infamous Feb. 28 fallout in the Oval Office with the Ukrainian president.
When presented the question Monday about holding an election, Zelenskyy demurred.
"Of course, we are open for election, yes," Zelenskyy said. "We have to do safety circumstances, and a little bit – we need to work in parliament, because during the war, you can't have an election.
"But we can do security. We need, how do you say it, we need a truce, yes, everywhere on the battlefield, the sky, the sea, to make it possible for people to do democratic, open, legal elections."
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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