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

But Trump didn’t take the bait when Musk attempted to goad him into attacking Brussels over his 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.

But Trump didn’t bite, instead launching into a diatribe about the US 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. US 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.