As he tries to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine, President Donald Trump said it is for greater reasons than merely Nobel Peace Prize nominations: He is hoping it helps him "get to heaven."
"If I can save 7,000 people per week from being killed – I want to get to heaven, if possible; I'm hearing I'm not doing well," Trump said in a televised phone interview Tuesday morning. "If I can get to heaven, this will be a reason."
Trump briefly left the European leaders in the White House Oval Office to call Russia's Vladimir Putin on Monday – and Putin answered eagerly at 1 a.m. his local time – to discuss the urgency of the next step of Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy doing a 1-on-1 with his 3 1/2-year war counterpart.
"One gentleman said, 'Let's meet in another month or two,'" Trump said, cautiously adding he hopes saying this would not embarrass the unnamed European counterpart. "I said, 'A month or two?! You will have 40,000 people dead.'
"You do it tonight."
Trump, taking a more measured tone amid tenuous peace negotiations, noted his "great relationship" with Putin only matters if we get things done.
"I want to get things done," Trump said. "If it works out, I'll go to the trilat [trilateral meeting] and close it up."
Trump blamed former President Barack Obama for Russia's seizure of Crimea.
"Obama gave it away," Trump said. "They took the most valuable piece surrounded on four sides by ocean, a beautiful piece of property. Why the heck did he do that to them? In one of the dumbest real estate deals I've ever seen."
Trump also contrasted his approach to NATO funding with President Joe Biden's. Ukraine is no longer getting free aid and weapons from the U.S., only buying through NATO, Trump remarked.
"Since I've been there, we don't pay," Trump said. "I got NATO to go from 2% to 5%.
"We sell to NATO, and NATO pays us immediately. Then they give it to Ukraine."
And NATO and Ukraine can do whatever they want with the weapons from there, Trump noted.
It might be a reason Putin trusts Trump as a mediator for peace talks, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday that Trump is the only one in the world who can bring Putin to the table for peace talks.
Meanwhile, Trump said European nations are ready to take a harder line, and Trump is the only one who can broker peace between the "Coalition of the Willing" in a new hot war with Russia.
"France and Germany, and the U.K., they want boots on the ground," Trump said. "Putin is tired of it; they are all tired of it."
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.