More than 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since Russia invaded the Eastern European nation in February 2022. Cities have been leveled, and 370,000 injuries have been reported, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
But the scope and scale of that devastation is apparently easily comprehended by Donald Trump, who has refused to visit the country. Speaking with reporters at Mar-a-Lago on Monday, Trump repeated several times that Ukraine had been “flattened like a pancake” while comparing the war to his lucrative Manhattan real estate career.
The president-elect took a detour while responding to a question about whether he believed Ukraine should cede territory to Russia, describing areas of the country as more akin to “demolition sites” than recognizable cities.
“A lot of that territory, when you look at what’s happened to those—there are cities where there’s not a building standing. It’s a demolition site. There’s not a building standing,” Trump said. “People can’t go back to those cities.”
But that’s when the president-elect’s answer took a turn for the worse, suddenly conflating the controlled demolitions carried out by his multimillion-dollar real estate development company to the near-constant barrage of bombs dropped by Russian forces on Ukrainian cities.
“Just like when I knock down a building in Manhattan, which is actually, this is worse actually, because we do it step by step,” he continued. “This thing, this is—and by the way, in those buildings are many people. Many people are in those buildings.
“Big buildings—this is what I did, very well—these are very long buildings, 15 to 20 stories high, and they’re flattened like a pancake.
“It’s gotta be stopped, and I’m doing my best to stop it,” he added.
Trump’s other answers about his international relationships were similarly befuddling. At one point, the president-elect insisted that Chinese President Xi Jinping had not yet decided if he would attend Trump’s inauguration (Xi has reportedly declined the invitation) and claimed that leaders of hundreds of nations had phoned him to attend, dryly remarking that “you wouldn’t believe how many countries there are.”
Ultimately, any attendance by a world leader at Trump’s inauguration would be historically unprecedented. State Department records dating back to 1874 indicate that no foreign heads of state have ever shown up to the ceremony, typically over security concerns.
One of Trump’s biggest and boldest campaign promises was that he would immediately end the Russian invasion of Ukraine—though his philosophy on how to achieve that was suspiciously scant of details and, at times, veered toward solutions that would invariably aid Russia.
In June, Trump said he would be open to an increase in U.S. weapons aid to Ukraine so long as it shows up for peace talks with Russia.
Trump’s advisers envisioned that the peace talks—which Trump promised to facilitate upon winning in November—would also quietly include Ukraine ceding part of the country that is currently occupied by Russian forces. The concept was drawn up by retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg and Fred Fleitz, both former chiefs of staff in Trump’s National Security Council.
Trump has also threatened to initiate U.S. withdrawal from NATO, the strategic Western military and trade alliance that opposes Russia. In February, Trump claimed he once told a European leader that he’d allow Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to NATO allies if other members didn’t “pay” their “bills.”
CNN announced Sunday that it has begun investigating the identity of a man who the network had claimed in a recent report was a prisoner of the ousted Syrian government, according to The Wrap.
In a story published last week, chief CNN international correspondent Clarissa Ward and her crew, escorted by Syrian rebels, discovered a man hiding under a blanket in what was the “only locked cell” in a “secret prison” at a Syrian air force intelligence base in Damascus.
The man identified himself as a civilian named Adel Gharbal from Homs, and claimed that he had been in solitary confinement for three months. He appeared surprised to learn that Bashar Al Assad’s regime had fallen.
“In nearly twenty years as a journalist, this was one of the most extraordinary moments I have witnessed,” Ward wrote in a post on X.
When asked by CNN’s Anderson Cooper what is known “about this man and how he ended up in the prison,” Ward admitted that “we don’t know that much because you can see from the report, Anderson, that he’s in a deep state of shock.”
However, some concerns have surfaced about the veracity of the report.
A website called Verify-Sy, which states that it fact-checks stories about Syria, said that residents of a neighborhood called Al Bayyada had identified the man as Salama Mohammad Salama, or “Abu Hamza,” a first lieutenant in Syrian air force intelligence.
Verify-Sy also pointed out that the man’s behavior did not seem to match his reported conditions of confinement and torture, as he did not flinch when exposed to light and appeared well groomed and physically unharmed.
Now CNN is looking into the possibility that the man wasn’t a prisoner at all.
“We reported the scene as it unfolded, including what the prisoner told us, with clear attribution. We have subsequently been investigating his background and are aware that he may have given a false identity. We are continuing our reporting into this and the wider story,” CNN said in a statement to The Wrap.
“No one other than the CNN team was aware of our plans to visit the prison building featured in our report that day. The events transpired as they appear in our film,” CNN said in the statement. “The decision to release the prisoner featured in our report was taken by the guard—a Syrian rebel.”
CNN can’t seem to spot the difference between the assassination of a health insurance executive who made his money denying millions of Americans health care access and the death of innocent........