Part two of Sean Hannity’s interview with President Trump aired Jan. 23 on Fox News, with a heavy focus on international policy. Hannity tried to goad Trump by asking about the U.S.’s “three top geopolitical foes,” Russia, China, and Iran, starting by asking Trump about his recent conversation with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Trump simply said “it went fine” and then proceeded to reiterate his oft-made comments about his friendship with Xi, as well as with Russian President Putin.
Trump was then asked if he could stop China from invading Taiwan, to which he replied: yes, “I can do that, because we have something that they want.” He spoke about trade deficiencies and the importance of tariffs to resolve them: “We have one very big power over China, and that’s tariffs. And they don’t want—and I’d rather not have to use it—but it’s a tremendous power over China.”
Asked about Iran, Trump said that’s a “different thing. That’s a religious deal that is very dangerous, very, very dangerous … that could be a big problem,” without elaborating further.
The discussion then moved to Ukraine, where things turned somewhat worse. Trump claimed that Ukraine was “the apple of his [Putin’s] eye,” and that the war never would have started had he been in office. He said Biden had “allowed energy to go up, way up. If he brought it down, the war wouldn’t have started because Putin wouldn’t have had the money. Putin makes all his money on energy.” He blamed Biden again, but then added: “but Putin shouldn’t have done it…. And it has to stop.” Trump then referenced his Truth Social post from Jan. 22, where he threatened Russia with sanctions if it did not “make a deal,” and said: “I mean it… If they don’t settle this war soon, like almost immediately, I’m going to put massive tariffs on Russia, and massive taxes, and also big sanctions.… I don’t want to do that, but we got to get that war ended.”
Trump also claimed Zelenskyy “wants to settle now. He’s had enough. He shouldn’t have allowed this to happen either, you know he’s no angel … first of all he’s fighting a much bigger entity, much bigger. When he was talking so brave…” and emphasized a deal should have been made earlier.
A last odd part of the interview came when Hannity asked Trump about Russia’s hypersonic missiles, and why they have them, whereas the U.S. doesn’t. Trump ridiculously claimed that “Russia stole the design … they got it from us,” while later admitting that the U.S. still doesn’t possess the technology. He blamed “some bad person” during Obama’s Administration for leaking the technology. “We’ll have them starting fairly shortly,” claiming the American ones will be better, and will be “super-hypersonic.”
