RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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See the full story · 1 sourcesTrump’s bizarre mimicking of missile defense strikes came during a historic televised cabinet meeting held at Camp David
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President Donald Trump ‘s attempt to describe the prowess of American air defense weapons left him making childish video game-like sounds as he recounted how U.S. anti-aircraft interceptors successfully downed a quintet of Iranian ballistic missiles over the weekend.
Speaking at a cabinet meeting on Friday, the president was answering a question on whether he’d permit Ukraine to manufacture Patriot missile interceptors under a license when he digressed into the onomatopoetic tangent.
“The other day you read that five missiles were shot. They were going 8,600 miles per hour ... and they were big missiles, and they were shot at Jordan, and our guys were there — bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. Five missiles, and we shot all before they got close,” he said.
He added that “nobody else” has that sort of anti-ballistic missile defense capacity and called the Patriot system “incredible” while suggesting that he was not inclined to grant Kyiv’s request for a license because “we have to be very careful about letting somebody build them.”
“You have to be very judicious, but you have to be very careful. Now, we have not agreed to that. We're talking about it, but it's a hard thing to give away that kind of technology, and I don't think this would ever happen,” he said.
The president then suggested that Kyiv could turn around and use the American-made technology against the U.S. in the future, noting that such changes of alliance have “happened a couple of times over the years.”
His ambivalence about a licensing arrangement appeared to walk back his position from several weeks ago, when he had appeared to endorse the idea.
Trump’s consideration of allowing Ukraine to manufacture American-made weapons comes as the president appears to have made a U-turn in his once-frosty relationship with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.
Though he infamously tossed the Ukrainian leader out of the White House after a contentious Oval Office meeting last February, Trump appears to have changed his opinion of the former television star as Ukraine’s armed forces have begun succeeding in making audacious strikes on Russian territory with home-grown drone equipment that American defense officials now want to evaluate for U.S. use.
Zelensky, who met with Trump at the White House on Tuesday before they both attended late South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham’s funeral, said in a post on X that he’d had a "good meeting" with the American president at which they’d discussed the Patriot licensing matter and “several other ideas that could help.”
“We also spoke about diplomacy — it’s important that the diplomatic process be reinvigorated,” he said.
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