Former President Donald Trump said that any telephone conversations he may have had with Vladimir Putin since leaving office were a “smart thing,” though he declined to confirm the recently reported calls during an appearance at the Economic Club of Chicago on Tuesday.

“I don’t comment on that,” Trump said. “But I will tell you that if I did, it’s a smart thing. If I’m friendly with people, if I have a relationship with people, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing, in terms of a country. (Putin’s) got 2,000 nuclear weapons, and so do we.”

The comments were the latest in a long line of remarks in which Trump has praised the president of Russia, whom Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris recently called a “murderous dictator.”

Citing an unnamed source, a new book by veteran political journalist Bob Woodward reportedly says that Trump and Putin have spoken as many as seven times since Trump left office more than three years ago. Released Tuesday, the book, “War,” also reveals that Trump, while president, sent the Russian leader COVID-19 testing equipment for his own use.

When pressed on the topic by Q&A moderator John Micklethwait, editor in chief of Bloomberg News, Trump added, “I don’t talk about that. I don’t ever say it. But I can tell you what, Russia has never had a president that they respect so much.”

Speaking in front of a friendly audience over the course of roughly an hour, Trump shared his views on tariffs, monetary policy and the Federal Reserve. But he also went on meandering digressions, such as one that covered the safe return of a SpaceX Super Heavy-Starship rocket on Sunday (“I said, ‘What the hell ... !’”), and even tried out a French accent while relating a squabble he’d had with Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, over a threatened import tax on wine (“He’s a wise guy.”).

On the subject of tariffs, Trump championed his plan to put them on various imported items.

Tariffs, Trump said, are “for protection of the companies that we have here and the new companies that will move in, because we’re going to have thousands of companies coming into this country. ... We’re going to protect them when they come in, because we’re not going to have somebody undercut them.”

The nonpartisan Tax Foundation has reported that tariffs imposed by the Trump administration in 2018 and 2019 amounted to “nearly $80 billion worth of new taxes on Americans.”

“I’m a believer in tariffs,” Trump said. “To me, the most beautiful word in the dictionary is ‘tariff.’ It’s my favorite word. It needs a public relations firm.”

Later, Micklethwait invoked the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to ask Trump if he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power after the November election.

But Trump never directly answered the question, and falsely said there had been a peaceful transfer after the 2020 election, despite the storming of the Capitol, which saw more than 100 people injured and one attendee, Ashli Babbitt, fatally shot by a law enforcement officer. “It was love and peace. And some people went to the Capitol, and a lot of strange things happened there,” said Trump, who shared other falsehoods about Jan. 6.

When Micklethwait asked the question again, Trump said of the journalist, “This is a man that has not been a big Trump fan over the years.”

Trump’s discursive appearance also saw him squabble with Micklethwait over a pejorative nickname for Gov. Gavin Newsom, and ridicule the moderator for his fiscal views. “You’ve been wrong all your life on this stuff,” Trump said, eliciting laughter from the crowd.

A Harris-Walz spokesperson said the interview “was yet another reminder that a second Trump term is a risk Americans simply cannot take.”

“An angry, rambling Donald Trump couldn’t focus, had to be repeatedly reminded of the topic at hand, and whenever he did stake out a position, it was so extreme that no Americans would want it,” Harris-Walz campaign spokesperson Joseph Costello said in a statement.

The former president’s campaign moved quickly to position the appearance in Chicago as a win, sending out an email that said the former president “was in his element as he spoke passionately about restoring economic growth, prosperity, and opportunity for all Americans.”

“Kamala could NEVER,” the message said.

Micklethwait said that the Chicago club had invited Harris — whom Trump mentioned only fleetingly — to participate in a similar conversation, but she had “declined so far.”

On Tuesday, Trump also planned to rally voters in Atlanta and spoke with conservative media host Glenn Beck for his BlazeTV online program. He argued that immigration is voters’ greatest priority.

“The biggest thing that people are going to be looking at and voting on is what’s happening at our border where murderers are allowed to come in and where drug dealers are allowed to come in and just destroy our country. Literally destroy it,” he told Beck.

Harris frequently argues that Trump killed a bipartisan border bill that would have increased the number of agents at the border and reduced the flow of fentanyl into this nation because he was more concerned about keeping the issue alive to boost his election prospects than in solving the problem.

Trump also said he was serious about tasking Elon Musk, the owner of X and the founder of Tesla and SpaceX, with reeling in federal spending.

“He feels there’s tremendous fraud, waste and abuse,” Trump said. “He could save a lot of money and make lives better.”

_____

(Times staff writer Seema Mehta in Los Angeles contributed to this report.)

©2024 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.