It is “a good thing” for US presidents to get along with foreign leaders, even if Washington disagrees with their policies, Donald Trump has said. The Republican presidential nominee cited his own track record with Vladimir Putin, claiming that the Russian leader “respected him.”
In a livestreamed interview with X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk on Monday, Trump accused the current US administration of weakness and a failure to engage with certain foreign leaders.
“I know Putin very well. I got along with him very well. He respected me and it’s just one of those things,” the former president said.
Trump claimed he had established a rapport with Putin despite the ‘Russiagate’ attack on his administration, which he said had been launched by his then-Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, and a group of “shifty people.”
“I hope to get along well with him again. You know, getting along well with them is a good thing, not a bad thing,” Trump said, referring to Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Trump was responding to Musk’s suggestion that “evil dictators” and “real tough characters” need to be intimidated by the White House for the world to be a safer place.
The Republican reiterated his claim that the Ukraine conflict would not have broken out under his watch, blaming incumbent President Joe Biden for the start of hostilities.
Trump claimed that while in office, he had issued unspecified warnings to Putin regarding Ukraine. “I said: ‘Don’t do it, you can’t do it. Vladimir, you do it, it’s gonna be a bad day. You can’t do it’. And I told him things that I’d do. And he said: ‘No way’. And I said: ‘Way’.”
He also recalled the runup to the crisis in late 2021-early 2022, when Russia accumulated troops in regions close to Ukraine after NATO rejected Moscow’s call to deflate the tensions. Trump, who was no longer in office at the time, said he had perceived the military buildup as Putin’s way of trying to reach a deal.
“Putin is a good negotiator. I thought he was doing that to negotiate,” Trump said. “But then Biden started saying such stupid things.”
In particular, Trump cited Biden’s vow to bring Ukraine into NATO against Russian objections. Moscow has protested the US pledge to Kiev ever since it was first made under President George W. Bush in 2008.