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Trump: Biden gave 'P.T. Barnum' Zelensky missiles, and they were sold on the open market

Photo: Daniel Torok / Public domain (source)

Trump Calls Zelensky ‘P.T. Barnum,’ Says Biden-Era Missiles Were ‘Sold on the Open Market’

by
M.A. Rothman

By M.A. RothmanOctober 16, 2026 · 4 min read
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President Trump on Thursday called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “P.T. Barnum” and accused the Biden administration of handing Ukraine a fortune in American weapons and cash without making anyone pay for it. In an interview with Newsmax, Trump said some of those weapons ended up for sale. “Biden was giving them missiles. And they were being sold on the open market,” he said.

The remarks were the sharpest in a series of comments in which Trump made clear that his patience with Kyiv has run out. “Zelensky is not a good guy for us to deal with,” he said in the same interview, according to Newsweek and the German news agency DPA.

“There was nobody to pay”

Trump’s complaint was not only about the amount of aid. It was about the terms. In a clip from the interview, he described the Biden approach as one in which America shipped its most valuable munitions overseas and sent the bill to no one.

“They gave to P.T. Barnum, which is Zelensky, massive amounts of Patriots, of Tomahawks, of everything. And they didn’t make them pay. There was nobody to pay,” Trump said. (The Biden administration did send Patriot air-defense systems; it never provided Tomahawk cruise missiles.)

He said he changed that. “So I went to the European Union and said, I’m not going to give you anything you have to pay. They have a lot of money. They’ve been paying us and we send them munitions.”

Then came the figure. “He gave hundreds of, probably three hundred and fifty billion dollars worth of equipment and cash to Ukraine. Where is the cash that we gave to Ukraine? … Where’s all the equipment? You know, people are selling that equipment.”

Trump also described a new order of priorities for American arsenals: America restocks first. “Over the last period of time, we just take the munitions for ourselves because we have to have for ourselves,” he said. “And once we are stocked, really stocked, we will start letting our allies buy them from us.”

What the numbers show

The $350 billion figure is Trump’s estimate, and it is higher than the official tallies. The British fact-checking group Full Fact notes that Congress approved about $175 billion in aid for Ukraine since 2022, and that, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, only about $106 billion of that directly aided the government of Ukraine, with the rest funding related U.S. activities. The Kiel Institute, which tracks aid to Ukraine, estimated the U.S. had allocated about $119.5 billion. Full Fact says it is unclear what Trump’s higher figures are based on.

But the size of the check is only half of Trump’s point. The other half is whether anyone was watching where the money and weapons went, and on that question the record is not reassuring.

In January 2024, the Pentagon’s own inspector general reported that serial-number inventories were delinquent for more than $1 billion of the $1.7 billion in sensitive weapons that required enhanced end-use monitoring, as of June 2023, according to Breaking Defense. Those are the systems the U.S. is supposed to track item by item precisely because of the risk that they end up in the wrong hands.

Trump did not offer specific evidence in the clip for his claim that missiles were sold on the open market. Pentagon officials under Biden said they had not found systemic diversion; then-Under Secretary of Defense Colin Kahl testified in February 2023, according to Breaking Defense, “we are not seeing any evidence of systemic diversion of the equipment the United States has provided.” Still, an administration that had fallen behind on serial-number inventories for more than half of its most sensitive shipments, by value, was in no position to promise taxpayers that nothing went missing.

A war Trump wants ended

The interview came at a tense moment between Washington and Kyiv. On Oct. 11, Trump announced an energy truce between Russia and Ukraine. Ukraine said it paused strikes on Russian refineries, but Russia kept hitting Ukraine’s power grid, and on Oct. 15 Zelensky lifted the restrictions on attacks against Russian oil facilities, according to the Kyiv Independent.

Trump made no secret of what he thought of that decision. “He doesn’t want to settle. He says he wants to settle, but he doesn’t,” he said, according to Newsweek. “All he’s doing is making the world oil price higher.” He added: “I’m not a big fan of Zelensky. They’ve destroyed that country,” and said, “I find Zelensky to be more difficult to deal with than Putin.”

Kyiv, for its part, is short on exactly the weapons Trump was talking about. Media reports on Oct. 15, citing Ukrainian officials, said Ukraine’s supply of Patriot interceptors had reached a critical low, according to the Kyiv Independent. Zelensky, for his part, blamed the people around Trump. “I think Trump’s advisers are wrong. I don’t know who is pushing him to the wrong side,” he said, and asked whether he felt betrayed, answered, “Really, yes.”

Why it matters

For three years, Americans were told that questioning the scale of aid to Ukraine meant siding with Moscow. Trump’s position is simpler: the war should end, Europe should pay for its own defense, and the United States should not empty its own stockpiles for a partner who will not negotiate. Whatever one thinks of his number, his question is the one Washington never answered to taxpayers’ satisfaction: where did it all go?

Biden wrote the checks and let the receipts fall behind; Trump is the one finally asking where the weapons went.

Sources

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