WATCH: Bill Maher Asks ‘Why Didn’t Putin Invade Ukraine When His Boyfriend Trump Was In Office?’
Comic and pundit Bill Maher asked his panel why Vladimir Putin didn’t invade Ukraine when “his boyfriend” former President Donald Trump was in office.
On Friday night’s edition of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, the host put that question to guests Max Brooks and Kristen Soltis Anderson, and none of the responses were complimentary to Mr. Putin or Mr. Trump:
MR. MAHER: But I know you were watching our show last week and you heard me say, Why didn’t Putin invade Ukraine when his boyfriend, Trump was in office? I mean, Trump stood with him at Helsinki and defended him over our own intelligence agencies. So I was just asking the question. And maybe you do have an answer. Why not? When Trump was in office, it would seem to be the more logical place.
MR. BROOKS: No, he didn’t invade because he didn’t need to, because you only roll out the tanks when you think you’re out of options. And Putin had a grand asymmetric strategy to dismantle Naito from within. And it was working when the commander in chief of the United States Armed Forces calls Naito obsolete. You are on the road to a fifth column victory, and that’s what he was doing, and it’s a matter of fact we know now in 2018. Thank you. Maybe. Well, we know this, in 2018. Trump wanted to pull out of Naito, and it was John Kelly and John Bolton who had to hold him down like a rabid dog to stop him from doing that. And if Trump had won a second term, he would have done it. But Biden being elected caused Putin’s plan to go up in smoke.
MR. MAHER: We don’t know what he would have done. We don’t know why he did what he did.
MS. SOLTIS ANDERSON: Now it’s rather backfiring…
MR. MAHER: Trump generally did what he wanted not matter who held him down and said, what…
MS. SOLTIS ANDERSON: One of the things that Trump always said, though, was that he wanted Europe to be more in charge of its own defenses, and nobody has done more to advance that cause than Vladimir Putin by doing this invasion. Because now you have a country like Sweden or a country like Switzerland has said, Hey, we’re going to send weapons to Ukraine or countries like Germany has said we’re going to increase our defense spending to a significant portion of our GDP. You’ve messed up as Vladimir Putin strategically that you have provoked them to do the opposite of what this is.
MR. MAHER: What’s so surprising to me about Putin? We always knew he was evil, but nobody ever called him dumb. And now he looks dumb. He looks dumb and not powerful. You know, I honestly, I was wrong. I thought he was not going to invade. I thought it was just brinksmanship. But now like, this could really go so bad for him. I mean, the Russians have had a revolution before. … And when you have the morale of the army, we know is where it is, when you have the economy tanking the way it is. I mean, it looks like they pulled back the curtain and the Wizard of Oz is just this old man with the sound machine.
Watch above via HBO.
