For more than eight years, failed 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton has often baselessly accused former President Donald Trump of being aligned with and beholden to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Clinton, in a social media post, has once again charged Trump for allegedly "siding with a murderous dictator" in Putin by way of his criticism of a recent multi-nation prisoner swap with Russia conducted by the Biden-Harris administration.

The apparent controversy over Trump's purported "congratulations" for Putin about the prisoner swap proves, once again, that his haters still don't understand -- or willfully ignore -- his brand of humor and sarcasm in criticizing the shortsighted decisions of the nation's Democratic leaders.

Trump criticized recent prisoner exchange with Russia

During a Saturday rally in Atlanta, Georgia, according to The Washington Post, former President Trump took issue with the Biden-Harris administration's prisoner swap last week with Russia and a handful of other countries that was reportedly the result of several months of negotiations.

The U.S., Germany, and other allied nations released several criminally convicted Russians from prison in exchange for Russia releasing several American and German citizens and Russian dissidents who'd been imprisoned for various alleged crimes.

"I’d like to congratulate Vladimir Putin for having made yet another great deal," Trump said during the rally. "Did you see the deal we made? Now look, we want to get people in -- you know, we got 59 hostages; I never paid anything -- but they released some of the greatest killers anywhere in the world."

"Some of the most evil killers they got, and we got our people back, but boy, we make some horrible, horrible deals," he added. "It's nice to say we got them back, but does that set a bad precedent?"

Trump congratulates Putin for the prisoner exchange pic.twitter.com/8nkM9whsbY

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 3, 2024

Clinton accuses Trump of taking Putin's side on prisoner swap

In response to The Post's article about former President Trump's remarks on the prisoner swap with Russia, failed 2016 nominee Clinton took to social media to lambast her political nemesis for supposedly "siding with" Russia's Putin.

In an X post that included a link to the article and a screenshot of its headline, Clinton wrote, "Even by Trump standards, siding with a murderous dictator who took Americans hostage is traitorous and pathetic. You do not, in fact, have to hand it to Putin."

Except, for anyone who actually listened to what Trump said on Saturday, if not over the past 10 years, and is honest about what they heard, knows that he was couching his criticism of the Biden-Harris administration in sarcasm and wasn't really congratulating the Russian president for gaining the upper hand in the negotiated prisoner swap.

Was Trump right that the prisoner swap was a bad deal?

Indeed, a CNN report on what is known about the 24 prisoners involved in the multi-nation swap reveals that former President Trump, unfortunately, is likely correct that the Biden-Harris White House made a bad deal that will potentially encourage adversarial nations like Russia to imprison more American and allied citizens on dubious charges with hopes of future swaps for legitimately bad Russian actors.

Of the eight Russians released as part of the exchange, one was a convicted murderer and suspected government assassin while the rest had been charged or convicted of serious crimes like espionage, computer hacking, and fraud.

They were exchanged for retired U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, U.S. journalists Evan Gershkovich and Alsu Kurmasheva, and several German citizens -- all of whom had been similarly accused or even convicted of espionage or other alleged crimes -- along with several Russian dissidents and opposition leaders.