Trump lauds ‘honorable’ Zelenskyy, slaps ‘bad’ EU in Musk interview

Donald Trump's promised blockbuster interview with X-owner Elon Musk was mostly sizzle, no steak.

The Republican candidate for U.S. president made no mention of Britain's far-right riots, took a half-hearted pot-shot at the EU's trade rules and the amount it spends helping Kyiv defend itself from Russia — and called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy "very honorable."

Trump dominated the rambling conversation that lasted more than two hours — and began inauspiciously after tech issues caused a delay of about 40 minutes. Beginning with a recap of the assassination attempt he survived last month, Trump launched into a series of near-monologues about his opponents in the race for the White House, immigration, inflation, law and order, farming, his relationship with the world's various dictators and the threat of nuclear war.

But Trump didn't take the bait when Musk attempted to goad him into attacking Brussels over its stance on misinformation.

Referring to an open letter addressed to Musk from the European Union's digital enforcer Thierry Breton, published ahead of the interview and reminding the X owner of the EU’s rules on promoting hate speech, Musk told Trump: "There's a lot of attempts to do censorship and to force censorship, even on Americans from other countries. What do you think about that?"

But Trump didn't bite, instead launching into a diatribe about the U.S. trade deficit with the EU, saying "they take great advantage of the United States in trade," and "they’re not as tough as China, but they’re bad."

Trump then revisited a favored talking point about the amount the EU spends helping Ukraine vs. U.S. spending — but rather than promising to cut America's aid, he appeared to suggest he wanted the EU to increase its own.

"I say, 'why aren't you going to equalize?' Why aren't they paying what we're paying?" Trump told Musk. "Why is the United States paying disproportionately more to defend Europe than Europe? That doesn't make sense. That's unfair, and that is an appropriate thing to address."

The former president then appeared to flirt with promising to cut aid to Kyiv — before going off-piste and instead praising Zelenskyy for his handling of a phone call that led to Trump’s first impeachment in December 2019, after he was accused of seeking to influence the 2020 election by leaning on the Ukrainian leader to investigate current President Joe Biden and his son Hunter. 

"Well, you know, when you talk about cost cutting and savings and everything else," Trump said, "I mean, honestly, look, there's nobody that feels worse about the Ukraine situation than I do, because I know it would have never happened. I know Zelenskyy. He was very honorable to me, because when they went with the Russia hoax and they said I had a phone call with him. He said it was a perfect phone call."

Trump spoke with Zelenskyy again last month — the first time he has done so since Russia launched its invasion.

At another point in his conversation with Musk, Trump also said that when he was U.S. president, he had warned Putin off attacking Ukraine.

"We would talk a lot about Ukraine — it was the apple of his eye," Trump said of Putin. "I said to Vladimir Putin, I said, 'Don't do it. You can't do it, Vladimir, you do it, it's going to 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.

In another bombastic moment toward the end of the interview, Trump said that Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris looked "like the most beautiful actress ever to live" and "very much like a great first lady, Melania" on the cover of TIME Magazine, before adding: "She didn't look like Kamala ... But, of course, she's a beautiful woman, so we'll leave it at that."

This story has been updated.