Bloomberg Businessweek interviewed former US President Donald Trump at his golf club, Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, on June 25, two days before the first 2024 presidential debate and about two weeks before a failed assassination attempt. In a discussion focused on business and the global economy, Trump talked about the Federal Reserve, inflation, tax cuts, tariffs, Taiwan and his relationships with chief executives. The interview was conducted by Bloomberg Senior Reporters Nancy Cook and Joshua Green, Managing Editor Mario Parker and Businessweek Editor Brad Stone. Below is a transcript of the conversation, lightly edited for clarity, and annotated with several fact-checks by Gregory Korte.
###
On Russia, as a businessman, you’ve talked about ending the war in Ukraine. Have you thought at all about easing or eliminating the sanctions on Russia as part of the deal that you’ve talked about to end the war in Ukraine?
Trump: Yeah. So what we’re doing with sanctions is we’re forcing everyone away from us. So I don’t love sanctions. I found them very useful with Iran, but I didn’t even need sanctions with Iran so much. I told China, that and Russia is in a similar position. I told China... I made people aware and I don’t think China is bad. But I made people aware that China has been ripping off this country for 30 years, OK, under every president, and I’m the only one who took in massive amounts of money, hundreds of billions of dollars from China.
###
Would you defend Taiwan against China?
Trump: Look, a couple of things. No. 1, Taiwan. I know the people very well, respect them greatly. They did take about 100% of our chip business1. I think, Taiwan should pay us for defense. You know, we’re no different than an insurance company. Taiwan doesn’t give us anything. Taiwan is 9,500 miles away. It’s 68 miles away from China. A slight advantage, and China’s a massive piece of land, they could just bombard it. They don’t even need to—I mean, they can literally just send shells. Now they don’t want to do that because they don’t want to lose all those chip plants. You know, all those plants and they don’t want to do that. But I will tell you, that’s the apple of President Xi’s eye, he was a very good friend of mine until Covid that I really, you know, I was, I didn’t feel the same way. Same thing with Putin.
Putin and I got along very well, with our relationship. We were never in danger of a war. He would have never gotten into Ukraine. I said, don’t ever, ever go into Ukraine.
Lots of media trying to ‘twist’ what Trump says into something not what he said. We are going to get a lot of this in the next 4 months.
There will be no need for sanctions against Russia once Trump is in office again.
Condolences to the zeepers! Ukraine is toast.
Trump is quite brilliant. I can’t believe the interviewer got him to saw as much as he did. This type of thinking is needed more than ever.
Trump will knee cap Zelensky and the Ukies.
What Biden’s sanctions has done to Russia is to make China, India and North Korea Russia’s best friends now.
Good for him!
Well he’s not wrong about the distance factor with Taiwan. IF China goes in it would be over long before we could respond even if we want to. We are certainly not invading after the fact to take it back. IDK if we even could.
I’m glad this article posted the comments in full.
In my opinion, the net effect of sanctions was permanent damage to western europe
Why should we be sanctioning a government that’s far less of a threat to what America should be than our own?
The best thing to combat Russia is to re-open the pipeline. Hit them in the pocketbook