Eric Trump was criticized after he claimed his father, former Republican President Donald Trump, would not have allowed Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine because Putin could tell the former President was a "strong person."
The younger Trump made the remarks during an interview with Fox News personality Sean Hannity, who had invited him onto his program to ask him what his father would have done had Putin opted to invade Ukraine before Democratic President Joe Biden took office.
You can hear Eric Trump's remarks in the videos below.
He said:
"Putin was in with the KGB. He can read people and he can tell that Donald Trump was a very strong person, right?"
He went on:
My father would've called up and said, 'Vladimir don't even think about it. Don't even try us, I'm telling you it's not going to work out very well for you'."
However former President Trump's praise for dictators is well documented.
Trump, who has long cozied up to Putin, sparked international controversy during the now infamous 2018 Helsinki summit after he publicly sided with Putin over the assessment of his own intelligence agencies that Russian operatives subverted the 2016 general election and undermined American democracy.
Given this almost sycophantic behavior, many found Eric Trump's claim absurd.
In January, Eric Trump's brother, Donald Trump Jr. made the erroneous claim that Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden, is to blame for Russian aggression toward Ukraine, thereby elevating conspiracy theories spread by their father.
And just last week, Trump Jr. was criticized after he characterized his father as a master manipulator who'd simply flattered noted authoritarians to suit his own ends.
Mocking people who've criticized Trump for "folding" to dictators, Trump Jr. insisted that his father's detractors amount to "some nerd in his mom's basement who's never dealt with anything" and "never actually understood those people."
He suggested that his father had merely "played" Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un "like a fiddle," a claim that does not hold up per analyses from international security experts like veteran diplomat William Burns, who once said that Trump's attempts to build personal relationships and curry favor with authoritarians like Putin and Kim make him appear "weak" at the negotiating table.
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