{"id":434476,"date":"2025-09-18T21:05:16","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T21:05:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/434476\/"},"modified":"2025-09-18T21:05:16","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T21:05:16","slug":"trump-turns-fire-on-putin-and-lauds-uk-in-press-conference-with-starmer-donald-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/434476\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump turns fire on Putin and lauds UK in press conference with Starmer | Donald Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

Donald Trump has accused Vladimir Putin<\/a> of letting him down in a joint press conference with Keir Starmer during which the US president piled criticism on his Russian counterpart.<\/p>\n

Trump said on Thursday that he had hoped to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine<\/a> soon after entering office, but that Putin\u2019s actions had prevented him from doing so.<\/p>\n

His comments came during an hour-long press conference alongside Starmer which marked the culmination of a two-day state visit<\/a> during which the president has largely steered clear of several points of tension between the two leaders.<\/p>\n

Trump largely avoided criticising the prime minister over Palestinian statehood or attacking Britain on free speech, though he caused awkwardness when he suggested Starmer could bring in the army to deal with irregular migration.<\/p>\n

His comments about the Russian president, however, will delight British officials who had hoped to use the unprecedented second state visit to isolate Putin on the world stage.<\/p>\n

Putin \u201chas let me down\u201d, Trump said. \u201cHe\u2019s killing many people, and he\u2019s losing more people than he\u2019s killing. The Russian soldiers are being killed at a higher rate than the Ukrainian soldiers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"'Putin‘Putin has let me down’: key takeaways from Trump and Starmer’s press conference \u2013 video<\/p>\n

Trump said he had thought it would be easy to negotiate a truce between Russia and Ukraine \u201cbecause of my relationship with President Putin \u2026 but he\u2019s let me down, he\u2019s really let me down\u201d.<\/p>\n

Trump ladled praise on the royal family, Starmer and Britain at the end of a visit full of pomp and pageantry.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re grateful beyond words for the spectacular honour of the state visit yesterday at Windsor Castle, hosted by His Majesty King Charles and Her Majesty Queen Camilla,\u201d he said soon after watching the Red Devil parachute team land on the Chequers lawn.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are two fantastic people,\u201d he said, before calling the UK \u201cthese beautiful, magnificent isles\u201d.<\/p>\n

During a wide-ranging press conference he offered his opinions on: wind power \u2013 \u201ca very expensive joke\u201d; the sacking of the US television host Jimmy Kimmel<\/a> \u2013 \u201cnot a talented person\u201d; and his predecessor Joe Biden \u2013 \u201cnever the brightest bulb in the ceiling\u201d.<\/p>\n

He dismissed a question about Peter Mandelson<\/a>, claiming never to have known him, despite the pair having met several times.<\/p>\n

He disagreed openly with Starmer\u2019s decision<\/a> to recognise Palestinian statehood, but only briefly, saying it was \u201cone of our few disagreements\u201d.<\/p>\n

He also gave his advice on dealing with small boat arrivals into the UK: \u201cI told the prime minister I would stop it. It doesn\u2019t matter if you call out the military, it doesn\u2019t matter what means you use, but it destroys countries from within.\u201d<\/p>\n

To the relief of Downing Street advisers, he entirely avoided answering a question about whether Britain has a problem with free speech, given the recent arrests of Lucy Connolly<\/a> and Graham Linehan<\/a> over social media posts.<\/p>\n

Starmer\u2019s greatest success during a 90-minute bilateral meeting was arguably to focus the president\u2019s ire on Putin over the ongoing war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Trump has in the past blamed the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and Biden for the war. In recent weeks, however, he has called Russia the aggressor<\/a>, and he focused his attention entirely on Putin on Thursday.<\/p>\n

\u201cI spoke to President Putin about Ukraine, it was the apple of his eye,\u201d he said. \u201cBut he would have never done what he did, except that he didn\u2019t respect the leadership of the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

He resisted Starmer\u2019s direct calls, however, for more sanctions on Russia.<\/p>\n

The PM said: \u201cIt\u2019s only when the president has put pressure on Putin that he\u2019s actually shown any inclination to move.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump responded by drawing attention to European and Indian imports of Russian oil. \u201cIf the price of oil comes down, Putin is going to drop out,\u201d he said. \u201cHe\u2019s going to have no choice. He\u2019s going to drop out of that war.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump has accused Vladimir Putin of letting him down in a joint press conference with Keir Starmer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":434477,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-434476","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115227336692958954","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=434476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434476\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/434477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=434476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}