One day after US President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin made little headway in their standoff over Syria at their first formal meeting in more than two years, Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump is agreeing with Putin on his backing of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Speaking on Fox News Channel’s The O’Reilly Factor on Tuesday evening, the billionaire praised Russia’s recent military buildup in Syria and expressed little concern for Putin’s support for his longtime Syrian ally.
“If he wants to fight ISIS [the Islamic State, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria], let him fight ISIS,” Trump said in an interview taped at his Trump Tower skyscraper in Manhattan.
“I say there’s very little downside with Putin fighting ISIS,” he added.
The US has long insisted that Syria’s future cannot include al-Assad. However, Putin has cast al-Assad’s government as the best defense against Islamic State militants, a group the US is also working to defeat.
Trump also suggested that al-Assad, who has used barrel bombs and chemical weapons against civilians, was preferable to other potential options.
“Personally, I’ve been looking at the different players and I’ve been watching Assad,” Trump said. “And I’m looking at Assad and saying maybe he’s better than the kind of people that we’re supposed to be backing because we don’t even know who we’re backing. We have no idea.”
Trump has long predicted that he would get along well with Putin.
On Monday he said: “Putin is a nicer person than I am.”
“I will tell you that, in terms of leadership, he’s getting an ‘A’ and our president is not doing so well,” he said.
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