Donald Trump: ‘Kim Jong Un Has A Nuclear Force That You Won't Even Believe’

Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday refused to say whether he's spoken with Russian President Vladimir Putin since leaving office, as reported in journalist Bob Woodward's latest book. But if the two did speak, Trump said, it would be “a smart thing” for the United States.

Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, was pressed on his communication with the Russian president during a wide-ranging — and sometimes contentious — interview with Bloomberg editor-in-chief John Micklethwait at the Economic Club of Chicago.

Woodward reports in his book “War” that Trump has had as many as seven private phone calls with Putin since leaving the White House and secretly sent the Russian president COVID-19 test machines during the height of the pandemic.

A Trump campaign spokesperson previously denied the report. During Tuesday's interview, Micklethwait posed the question to Trump directly: "Can you say yes or no whether you have talked to Vladimir Putin since you stopped being president?

“I don’t comment on that,” Trump responded. “But I will tell you that if I did it’s a smart thing. If I’m friendly with people, if I can have a relationship with people, that’s a good thing and not a bad thing in terms of a country.”

Trump said that Putin, who invaded neighboring Ukraine and who has been accused of war crimes by the International Criminal Court, is well respected in Russia and touted his relationship with him, as well as the authoritarian leaders of North Korea and China.

“Look, I had a very good relationship with President Xi and a very good relationship with Putin, and a very good relationship with Kim Jong Un," he said.

Trump also defended his support for high tariffs as an economic cure-all. “To me, the most beautiful word in the dictionary is 'tariff,'" Trump said. Micklethwait repeatedly pressed Trump on warnings from economists that the costs of high tariffs will be passed along to American consumers, raising prices. But Trump didn't budging. "It must be hard for you to spend 25 years talking about tariffs as being negative and then have somebody explain to you that you're totally wrong," he said as the audience laughed.

Later in Tuesday's interview, Trump refused to say whether he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power should he lose the November election. He also claimed there was a peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 election, despite his supporters' violent attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6.

“Come on. You had a peaceful transfer of power compared to Venezuela,” Micklethwait responded.

Trump also repeated several other falsehoods in his response, claiming that "not one of those people had a gun" and that "nobody was killed," except Ashli Babbitt, a Trump supporter who was shot and killed by police. In fact, five people died in the riot and its immediate aftermath, including Brian Sicknick, a police officer. Four additional officers who responded to the riot killed themselves in the following weeks and months.