Former President Donald Trump is trying to walk back his earlier comments he made about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine while at the same time bragging about how “tough” he was on the Russian leader.

In an interview with The Washington Examiner (a right-wing rag if there ever was one) Trump said he was “surprised” that Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine, adding that he thought Putin’s threats were a “smart way to negotiate,” RollingStone reports.

“I’m surprised — I’m surprised. I thought he was negotiating when he sent his troops to the border,” Trump said. “I thought he was negotiating. I thought it was a tough way to negotiate but a smart way to negotiate.”

Then he said he believed Putin would “make a good deal” with the U.S. in regards to trade. Of course, he couldn’t resist bragging “We’ve never made a good trade deal until I came along. And, then he went in — and I think he’s changed. I think he’s changed. It’s a very sad thing for the world. He’s very much changed.”

No duh.

But Trump’s remarks were a pretty big divergence from the ones he made just before Putin invaded Ukraine.

“I said, ‘This is genius,'” Trump noted on a right-wing podcast two days before the attack. “Putin declared a big portion of … Ukraine … as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful. … I said ‘How smart is that? And he’s going to go in and peacekeeper.”

However, when Russia fired missiles into Ukraine on February 24, Trump took to Fox News to blame the Biden administration and to once again, for the 40 bazillionth time falsely claim the election was “rigged.” And as the humanitarian crisis unfurled, he also used the opportunity to complain about immigration.

In other words, more of Trump’s typical blather. I’m beginning to wonder by now if he mutters some of this nonsense in his sleep.

Despite all of his Putin praise, Trump told The Washington Examiner that he doesn’t have a “soft spot” for the Russian autocrat.

“I’ve been very, very tough on Putin, I get a bad rap on that,” he said.

The right-wing site noted that the former president doubled down on his claims that Russia wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine if he were still president.

“When you think of it, who was tougher on Russia than me?” he said, adding later that he “did the biggest sanctions on anybody’s ever done on Russia.”

Trump tried to hammer his point home by arguing that his administration’s agenda to modernize the U.S. nuclear program would be the opposite of what Putin would want.

“I got billions and billions of dollars” for NATO, he said. “Now all that money is going against Russia, so I did that. I closed the pipeline. You know the pipeline was closed and Biden opened it.”

Then he once again emphasized how “tough” he was on Putin.

“I’ve been very critical of Putin from the standpoint of the pipeline, from the standpoint of raising billions and billions of dollars in NATO to protect — primarily Europe against Russia,” Trump claimed. “Nobody else did that.”

The “pipeline” being referred to is a roughly 750-mile long undersea pipeline that would carry Russian natural gas to Germany (which, if you ask me, sounds like a natural disaster waiting to happen.) To be clear, a fact-check by the Austin-American Statesman shows that BOTH Trump and Biden have sanctioned Russia over the pipeline. Neither president, however, has stopped it.

So no, Trump didn’t close the pipeline. He’s just bragging ineffectually once again. Are you even surprised?