In the wake of the surprise news that the U.S. has negotiated a multi-country prisoner exchange that will return numerous American citizens — including detained American journalist Evan Gershkovich and former Marine Paul Whelan — to American soil after they were held in Russia, critics of Donald Trump are hitting the former president for his previous social media posts about Gershkovich.
The prisoner release news was especially surprising as Gershkovich had just last month received a sentence of 16 years in a high-security penal colony in a Russian court after being held for more than a year on dubious espionage charges.
Saying the “scope of the deal has little precedent in the post-Soviet era,” the New York Times called the exchange — in which Russia released 16 prisoners and Western countries released eight detainees — the “most far-reaching exchange between Russia and the West in decades.”
The Trump criticism came as political pundits covering the U.S. presidential election are pointing out that in May, former President and current GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump asserted that: “Evan Gershkovich, the Reporter from The Wall Street Journal, who is being held by Russia, will be released almost immediately after the Election, but definitely before I assume Office. He will be HOME, SAFE, AND WITH HIS FAMILY.”
Trump, who has long claimed a special relationship with and understanding of Putin, Kim Jong-Un, Hungary PM Viktor Orban and other so-called “strongmen” leaders, added in his claim about getting Gershkovitz released that: “Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, will do that for me, but not for anyone else, and WE WILL BE PAYING NOTHING!”
Trump critics who questioned his statement’s truthfulness and ethics when he made it are now landing on the former criticism, as Trump’s boast that “only he can do it” turns out to be false. President Joe Biden celebrated the exchange at a White House press conference with family members of the detainees. “Their brutal ordeal is over,” Biden said of those released in the deal.
Join me as I deliver remarks on the release of Americans detained in Russia. https://t.co/d8eeqle3uS
— President Biden (@POTUS) August 1, 2024
“Today, I stood beside the families of Paul, Evan, Alsu, and Vladimir in the Oval Office as they spoke to their loved ones for the first time since they regained freedom,” Biden tweeted. “Today, they’ll each be reunited with the missing piece of their soul.”
Today, I stood beside the families of Paul, Evan, Alsu, and Vladimir in the Oval Office as they spoke to their loved ones for the first time since they regained freedom.
— President Biden (@POTUS) August 1, 2024
These families never lost hope.
And today, they'll each be reunited with the missing piece of their soul. pic.twitter.com/v4Sv4fxsPd
Through a Kremlin statement, Putin gave Biden — without the namecheck — credit and gratitude for leadership that led to the swap.
“In its first statement about the prisoner swap, the Kremlin said that Russia was ‘grateful to the leadership of all countries that assisted’ in its preparation,” The New York Times reported. “The Kremlin said that President Vladimir V. Putin pardoned those who were convicted in Russia and exchanged for Russians held in the West.”
