Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton criticized President Donald Trump and his administration during an exchange at the Munich Security Conference over the weekend, saying Trump has "betrayed the West" with his "disgraceful" handling of Ukraine.
In particular, Clinton called out Trump's often deferential attitude toward Russian President Vladimir Putin, who invaded Ukraine in a "special military operation" in 2022. Clinton said that not only are Putin and Trump "profiting" off Ukrainian "misery," Trump is also looking to Putin as a "model" of what a leader can be, effectively betraying Western values.
She said:
"I think the Trump administration's position on Ukraine is disgraceful. I think the effort to force Ukraine into a surrender deal with Putin is shameful. I think the effort that Putin and Trump are making to profit off the misery and death of the Ukrainian people is a historic error and corrupt to the nth degree."
"I believe Ukraine is fighting for our democracy and our values of freedom and civilization on the front line losing thousands of people and having their country destroyed by one man's mania to control them and I think Trump either doesn't understand or could care less about that suffering, so that's what I think."
When asked by a panelist if she believes Trump "has destroyed the West," Clinton replied:
"He has betrayed the West, he’s betrayed human values, he’s betrayed the NATO charter, the Atlantic Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a lot of what has been done before to try to make sense of how difficult it is to restrain people who want unaccountable power."
“And none of us in this room, including all of us on this panel, would choose to live under a regime that was so unaccountable that it could act with impunity the way that Putin does, except that’s who Trump is modeling himself as."
You can hear what she said in the video below.
Many concurred with Clinton's assessment.
Clinton's remarks led to a clash with Czech Deputy Prime Minister Petr Macinka, who dismissed Clinton's frustrations because "you [Clinton] really don’t like him [Trump]."
Clinton said it is "absolutely true" that she doesn't like Trump but added that she doesn't like him "because of what he’s doing to the United States and the world, and I think you should take a hard look at it if you think that there is something good that will come out of it."
When Macinka described Trump's ascendancy as a "reaction" to "cancel culture," "the woke revolution," "the gender revolution," and "climate alarmism," Clinton was firm and asked if the debate over gender justified “selling out the people of Ukraine who are on the front lines dying to save their freedom and their two genders."
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