Just days after returning to the White House earlier this week, Donald Trump gave his first televised interview to his close confidant: Sean Hannity.
The commander-in-chief sat down with the Fox News host in his Oval Office on Wednesday, with the first part of the discussion – covering everything from pardoning of the Jan. 6 rioters to TikTok spying rumours – being broadcast later that evening.
Part two of his interview aired on Thursday, with Trump making a raft of brazen, often unsubstantiated claims surrounding the Russia-Ukraine war, Chinese tariffs, and tapping into US energy resources.
Here are the key takeaways from the second half of the president’s pre-recorded interview.
‘Zelensky’s no angel’
Almost three years after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his forces to invade Ukraine in February 2022, Trump thrust some of the blame for the conflict on Volodymyr Zelensky.
The Ukrainian president, he said, is “no angel” and “shouldn’t have allowed this war to happen”. Trump suggested that the conflict erupted because Zelensky failed to wave the white flag in advance of Russian troops beginning their attack.
Trump slammed the Ukrainian president for “talking so brave” and taking on a much larger, more powerful entity, he said.
Instead, Trump argued, “we could have made a deal”. He added: “I could have made that deal so easily. And Zelensky decided: ‘I want to fight.’”
‘Stolen’ hypersonic missile program
Trump was also pressed on Russia’s hypersonic Oreshnik missile, which was first used to strike the Ukrainian city of Dnipro in November.
He told Hannity that Russia had been leaked US designs for the missile during the Obama administration.
“Russia stole the design, they got it from us,” Trump said. “Some bad person gave them the design.”
The preisdent said the US was working on a “super hypersonic” missile program, “which is even a step better”. Trump claimed the weapons will be ready in the near future without specifiying when or providing further details on the program.
‘Smart guy’ Kim Jong-un
Trump said he is willing to resume talks with Kim Jong-un, and praised North Korea’s Supreme Leader as a “smart guy”.
The president has continued to boast of his strong ties with the dictator, who he colloquially calls “Little Rocket Man”, despite fraying relations between Washington and Pyongyang under the Biden administration.
“He’s not a religious zealot,” Trump argued. “He happens to be a smart guy. Kim Jong-un is a smart guy.”
Asked if he would reach out to him again, the president responded: “I will, yeah. He liked me, and I got along with him.”
Trump recalled former President Barack Obama’s remark that North Korea was the single greatest threat to America. “[Obama] said North Korea is the biggest threat, and I solved that problem.”
“I’m not Obama,” he concluded.
China tariffs
Trump said he “would rather not” place tariffs on Beijing, after earlier this week considering imposing a blanket 10 percent levy on Chinese goods and services imported into the US as soon as February 1.
After bragging of a “good” and “friendly” conversation with Xi Jinping, he described the Chinese president as a “very ambitious man” leading a “very ambitious country”.
Despite the apparently amicable relations, Trump noted that tariffs provide tremendous power over China. He also suggested that the financial sanctions may slow down the nation’s military expansion.
“We have one very big power over China, and that’s tariffs, and they don’t want them. And I’d rather not have to use it. But it’s a tremendous power over China,” he said.
Trump later added: “China gets a lot of its money from America and they use that money to build up their military.”
Oil, gas and ‘horrible’ wind turbines
US oil and gas resources are like a “pot of gold,” Trump said, which he belives can help pave the way to vast sums of wealth, while providing some leverage over China.
“We have something that they want: we have a pot of gold,” he said just days after declaring a national energy emergency. “China doesn’t have that. They have to go out the old fashioned way and buy it.”
Trump also shared his disdain of clean energy, namly wind turbines, and called solar panels “ridiculous”.
“The wind blows and then it doesn’t blow… they’re made in China; they kill the bird. They’re horrible,” he said.
“We don’t want windmills in this country. We’re putting an order on it. I’ve already sort of done it. We don’t want windmills... You know what else people don’t like? Those massive solar fields.”
