BURSTRep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) slammed President Trump's approach to brokering peace between Moscow and Ukraine on Tuesday and said he is realizing he was outplayed by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"Trump has skipped through the last few years all the way back to his first term really playing footsie with Putin and thinking that he's going to somehow be able to charm him to his will," Wasserman Schultz told CNN's John Berman in an interview Tuesday morning. "And, I mean, Putin is sadly far savvier than Donald Trump and Trump has messed around and found out."
The remarks came after Trump said over the weekend that Putin has "gone absolutely CRAZY!"
Trump, who has been pushing Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to end their three-year war, acknowledged on the Truth Social platform on Sunday that his views of the Russian leader had shifted after Moscow resumed bombarding its Eastern European neighbor with missiles and drones amid a large-scale prisoner swap.
"I've always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him. He has gone absolutely CRAZY!" Trump wrote, adding that Putin's continued efforts to seize Ukraine would "lead to the downfall of Russia!"
Trump campaigned on ending the war and has repeatedly said it never would have started had he been president in 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine.
Wasserman Schulz, a former chair of the Democratic National Committee who has been in Congress since 2005, said on CNN that Trump's public about-face on Putin isn't enough to bring an end to the war and called on the president and the GOP-led Congress to provide more assistance to Ukraine.
"I think what happened here is that Donald Trump is realizing that when he communicates with Putin or gets together with Putin it isn't for a play date," she said. "He has always been a brutal authoritarian and always been someone who has no regard for human life. He invaded Ukraine. He believes that Ukraine should be completely subsumed by Russia."
"It's never going to stop. I don't know how the president doesn't realize that," she added.