Former President Donald Trumpwarned in an X Space that the authoritarian leaders of North Korea and Russia are “at the top of their game” during the Biden administration — but said he “won’t do anything bad to Iran” if he wins re-election in 2024.
“I know [Russian President Vladimir] Putin. I know [Chinese] President Xi [Jinping]. I know [North Korean dictator] Kim Jong Un,” the ex-president said during a conversation with Elon Musk Monday night. “I’m not saying anything good or bad. They’re at the top of their game; they’re tough; they’re smart; they’re vicious — and they’re going to protect their country.”
“When they see a Kamala, or when they see a Biden, sleepy Joe, they can’t even believe it,” he speculated.
He also addressed Iran, saying that the US adversary “would not be attacking” if he were president. Tehran is suspected of planning a retaliatory attack for an Israeli airstrike that took out the former head of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh.
“I don’t want to do anything bad to Iran,” the former president declared. “But they knew not to mess around. Iran was broke because I told China, if you buy from Iran … you’re not going to do any business with the United States.”
“And they were at a point where they had no money for Hamas, they had no money for Hezbollah, they had no money for any of these instruments of terror,” Trump said of his administration.
Trump also touted his administration’s deterrence efforts for having slapped sanctions on Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline — and blamed President Biden for having reversed it.
“He shut down [the] Keystone XL Pipeline, which is our pipeline that would have employed 48,000 people,” the former president said. “And he approves the Russian pipeline.”
Musk at several points in the interview praised Trump for his “courage” amid his near assassination at a campaign rally last month, positing that whether a US president is “intimidating” has an effect on geopolitics.
Trump also revealed that in his parting words before leaving office President Barack Obama had cautioned him that America’s greatest threat in the coming years was from North Korea.
But during his time in the Oval Office, Trump said he “got along well” with Kim Jong Un.
“I had that problem worked out very quickly. It was nasty in the beginning with ‘Rocket Man,’” he claimed, causing Musk to laugh in recalling the “epic tweets” about the North Korean strongman.
“I said, ‘I have a red button on my desk too, but my red button works,” Trump remembered, suggesting that Obama nearly took the two nations to the brink of “nuclear war.”
He also blamed his predecessors for China and Russia’s burgeoning relationship that has national security hawks concerned.
“Obama and Biden — and [former President George W.] Bush to a certain extent, in all fairness — forced Russia and China together,” he said.
Trump said he was far tougher on Moscow than Biden, alleging that Russia would not have invaded Ukraine had he been president in 2022.
“I told him things,” Trump said of his words of warning to Putin in particular. “And he said, ‘No way.’ And I said, ‘Way.’”
Musk also expressed that people have had a tendency since the close of the Cold War to “underrate the risk of World War III,” prompting Trump to mention the Republican Party’s platform to address the heightened threat environment in 2024.
“When looking at the risk of global thermonuclear warfare, it’s game over for humanity,” Musk said.
“We’re going to build an Iron Dome over us,” Trump responded. “We’re going to have protection because it just takes one manic to start something.”
