Trump Tells NBC That He Spoke to Ukraine President Zelenskiy
(Bloomberg) -- President-elect Donald Trump said that Vladimir Putin wasn’t among the “probably” 70 phone conversations he has held with world leaders since winning the election, but that he still is planning to speak with the Russian president, according to NBC News.
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“I think we’ll speak,” Trump told NBC, Thursday, the news organization said.
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Trump on the campaign trail pledged to call Putin and broker a peace deal with Ukraine immediately after winning the election, suggesting repeatedly that he wanted to scale back or end US aid to Kyiv and that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy may need to accept territorial losses to end the fighting.
He told NBC News that Zelenskiy was among the phone calls he had conducted since Tuesday, but declined to share details of their conversation.
Zelenskiy, in a tweet congratulating Trump on the election, said he hoped they could work together to implement “peace through strength” and that his country was “interested in developing mutually beneficial political and economic cooperation that will benefit both of our nations.”
Trump, in the interview, also reiterated his intention to push forward with a mass deportation program upon taking office, saying he would have “no choice” but to carry it out, whatever the cost.
“It’s not a question of a price tag,” Trump said. “It’s not — really, we have no choice. When people have killed and murdered, when drug lords have destroyed countries, and now they’re going to go back to those countries because they’re not staying here. There is no price tag.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, said Wednesday that Trump’s team was preparing a executive order on immigration to be implemented on his first day in office.
“President Trump will issue an executive order. He has that authority under existing statutory law, but we’ve got to come right behind him with a robust legislative agenda,” Johnson told Fox News in an interview.
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