‘He Said No Way, I Said Way’: Trump Reveals Conversation With Vladimir Putin

Heikki Saukkomaa/Lehtikuva via AP

Former President Donald Trump succinctly summarized a conversation he had with Russian President Vladimir Putin during a Monday evening interview with billionaire Elon Musk on his platform X (formerly Twitter).

“We would talk a lot about Ukraine. It was the apple of his eye. But I said, ‘Don’t ever do it. Don’t ever do it,'” Trump told Musk. “I said to Vladimir Putin, ‘Don’t do it. You can’t do it, Vladimir. You do it, it’s gonna be a bad day. You cannot do it.’ And I told him things that what I do, and he said, ‘No way,’ and I said, ‘Way,’ and you know, it’s the last time we ever had the conversation.”

The former president also protested accusations that he was friendly with Russia and Putin.

“They say I loved Russia, I was a friend of Putin, and I loved Russia. No,” Trump said. “He actually said to me one time, he said, ‘If you’re my friend, I’d hate to see you as an enemy.’ I shut down his pipeline. The biggest pipeline.”

Trump’s interview with Musk was plagued by technical difficulties on Monday, which prevented users from tuning in until they were eventually fixed.

While Musk blamed the issues on a “massive DDOS attack” against his social network, unnamed X staffers told The Verge that no such attack was recorded and that there was a “ 99 percent ” chance Musk was lying.