President Donald Trump "holds both the economic and the military cards" to bring Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy together for peace talks, and he is the sole person who can bring their war to a stop, former Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert Wilkie said on Newsmax Saturday.
Putin also knows that the Russian people will learn that everything he has told them for the last two years "has been a lie," Wilkie said on Newsmax's "Saturday Agenda."
"He's been telling the Russians that Ukraine is just a traditional part of the Russian Empire, and that Zelenskyy doesn't even count as a world leader because he's just a rebel," said Wilkie.
Trump, he added, is the "only person who's going to bring this to a conclusion."
Wilkie also discussed Trump's meetings this week with leaders in the Middle East, telling Newsmax that they "changed the traditional dynamic of America's approach to the region."
"For 80 years since the end of World War Two, our approach has always been military first, either involvement or supplying weapons to our friends," said Wilkie. "This is a change in that the president went with the hope of economic prosperity spreading throughout the region to give people some semblance of a stake in their future."
Trump has the military cards with the Middle East, said Wilkie.
"The people he was sitting next to want the Iranians broken," he said. "They cannot survive with a hostile Shia empire in Iran. That is a mortal threat to not only our Arab friends, but also to Israel."
Trump has given Iran a way out, said Wilkie, adding that he doubts the "theocratic fanatics" will take it.
"I think they will try to extend negotiations as long as possible, or until President Trump leaves office," he said. "He doesn't have that kind of patience, because if they think he does, they're misreading him. And they're certainly forgetting the lessons of the first Trump four years."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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