Illustrating policy ambivalence, Trump now says he will 'get along with China'

New York, Sep 17 : Former US President Donald Trump has said that he will "get along well with China" and did not think that nations and others like Russia are the "enemies" that President Biden's administration considers them.

"I think we'll get along great with China," the Republican presidential candidate said on Monday during an online interview on X Spaces that again brought out his foreign policy ambivalence and his mercurial approach to policy.

The claim was in contrast to his threats to impose tariffs of 60 per cent or more on imports from China during his current campaign.

While he was President, he had accused China of "malfeasance" in causing the spread of Covid-19 and said that it had "raided our factories, offshored our jobs, gutted our industries, stole our intellectual property".

Trying to grab the mantle of a peacemaker in his current phase, he also said, "I think we'll get along great with Russia. I want to get Russia to settle up with Ukraine and stop this millions of people being killed."

He repeated his earlier assertion that he wanted bring the Ukraine war to an end "before I even take office, I want to get that done as President-elect".

Trump's interview was during the launch of a cryptocurrency enterprise mostly owned by his family, World Liberty Financial.

His son 18-year-old Barron, who started college this semester and has so far stayed away from the spotlight, is involved in the business and Trump praised his knowledge of cryptocurrency.

Trump said that he would make the US the "cryptocurrency capital of the world" and that if the US didn't act, China would dominate the field.

Trump promoting it during the election campaign is another example of him mixing politics and business, and if elected could create a conflict.

A virulent critic of Biden, on Monday, he took a conciliatory attitude to him during the interview.

"He was very nice, that he called up to make sure that I was OK," Trump said.

Biden also asked him about the security measures and if "we need more people on my detail," he added.

The President, he said, was the victim of a coup engineered by former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others.

"I thought he was treated really unfairly... he went to a primary system, he won, and then they threw him overboard," he added.

His now Democratic Party opponent Vice-President Kamala Harris "got no votes," he said.

Repeating his old line of creating a Red Scare, Trump said, "She'd be very bad for the country. We have to save our country, we can't play games, so we can't have a Marxist communist as the President."

(Arul Louis can be contacted at arul.l@ians.in and followed at @arulouis)