The former president, who once pushed to prosecute a former secretary of state for talking with foreign officials, said that it would be “a good thing” for himself to have secretly kept in touch with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia — if he did.
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Former President Donald J. Trump’s comments on Tuesday once again put his relationship with Russia’s leader at issue, with three weeks left in his campaign to reclaim the White House.
When he was president, Donald J. Trump grew incensed that former Secretary of State John Kerry still talked with foreign officials after leaving office — so much so, in fact, that he tried to have Mr. Kerry thrown in prison.
Now Mr. Trump is under a harsh spotlight over reports that he did what he once considered a crime.
Mr. Trump’s possible contacts with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia since departing the White House have put him on the other side of the line that he used to call a betrayal of the United States. But while he repeatedly excoriated Mr. Kerry for speaking with Iranian officials back in the day, Mr. Trump said on Tuesday that it would be “a good thing” for him to have stayed in touch with Mr. Putin.
The former president and current Republican nominee did not explicitly acknowledge talking with Mr. Putin over the past four years, as reported in a new book by the journalist Bob Woodward. But he did not dispute it, either, when asked during an appearance at the Economic Club of Chicago on Tuesday, seeming to suggest that he might in fact have communicated with the leader of the Kremlin despite adamant denials issued by his own campaign staff just last week.
“Can you say, yes or no, whether you have talked to Vladimir Putin since you stopped being president?” asked John Micklethwait, the editor in chief of Bloomberg News, who was interviewing him onstage.
“Well, I don’t comment on that, but I will tell you that if I did, it’s a smart thing,” Mr. Trump responded. “If I’m friendly with people, if I can have a relationship with people, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing in terms of a country. He’s got 2,000 nuclear weapons and so do we.”
Mr. Micklethwait said, “That sounds very much like you did talk to him.”
“No, I don’t talk about that,” Mr. Trump replied.
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