Trump: 'If I did' talk to Putin, 'it's a smart thing'

Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday declined to say if he's been in touch with Russian President Vladimir Putin since he left the White House but said it would have been smart if he had.

"Well, I don't comment on that, but I will tell you that if I did, it's a smart thing," Trump said in an interview with Bloomberg Editor-In-Chief John Micklethwait at the Chicago Economic Club. "If I'm friendly with people, if I have a relationship with people, that's a good thing, not a bad thing."

Trump's interactions with Putin have been the source of speculation since journalist Bob Woodward's book reported that the two have communicated multiple times since Trump left the presidency in early 2021.

Throughout his presidency, Trump praised Putin, including saying he believed Russian intelligence over the U.S. intelligence community with regard to Moscow's efforts to meddle in the 2016 election.

Trump last week flatly denied during an interview with ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl that the two leaders had recently been in touch.

"So, you haven't spoken to him since you left the White House?" Karl asked Trump. "No, I have not. That's false," he answered.

Despite repeatedly touting his close relationship with Putin in the Tuesday interview, Trump insisted he was tough on him, again saying he terminated the Nord Stream II pipeline.

"I said I don't comment on those things," Trump said when Micklethwait repeatedly followed up.

Trump also insisted that the 2020 election ended with a peaceful transition of power despite the Jan. 6, 2021, attack by a pro-Trump mob on the U.S. Capitol.

"People were angry," Trump said of the reaction to the election results before noting that he traveled home to Florida the day President Joe Biden was inaugurated.

"And it was love and peace. And some people went to the Capitol and a lot of strange things happened there. A lot of strange things with people being waved into the Capitol by police, with people screaming, 'Go in,'" Trump said.

Looking forward to a possible second Trump administration, the former president defended his plans to slap significant tariffs on many imports, which critics have said will amount to a sales tax on American consumers.

While Trump insists says that foreign countries pay for tariffs, economists say U.S. importers end up paying for the tariffs and passing much of the costs to consumers through higher prices.

Studies that have consistently shown that, including one from the government’s bipartisan U.S. International Trade Commission that found Americans paid for almost the entirety of Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods.

Micklethwait opened up the conversation with a critique from multiple economists -- a concern that his proposals for tax cuts would increase inflation and raise the national debt by trillions. Trump dismissed that nearly consensus view, reiterating his claim that a major growth from his proposals would make up for the cuts, saying the auto industry and other factories will come back to the United States.

"We're all about growth. We're going to bring companies back to our country," Trump said. “And we're going to bring the companies back. We're going to lower taxes still further for companies that are going to make their product in the USA."

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that Trump’s plan would add an additional $7.5 trillion to the national debt – compared to $3.5 trillion from Harris’s plan.

Trump claimed that he’s not going to allow foreign companies to sell a single car in the United States, throwing out self-admittedly random numbers for tariffs like "100%, 200% or 2,000%."

"The higher the tariff, the more likely it is that the company will come into the United States and build a factory in the United States so it doesn't have to pay the tariff," Trump said.

That would take "many years," Micklethwait said.