One day after turning a town hall into a music listening session and as the Harris campaign raises questions about his age and ability, former President Donald Trump delivered a combative and, at times, rambling performance during an interview with Bloomberg News’ editor-in-chief at an Economic Club of Chicago event on Tuesday.

During the conversation, Trump repeatedly refused to say if he’s spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin since leaving office, but said it would be “a smart thing” to do if he had. Journalist Bob Woodward, who has chronicled presidents dating back to Richard Nixon and helped expose the Watergate scandal, reported in his new book that Trump has had up to seven phone calls with Putin since leaving office in 2021 and secretly gave the Russian president COVID-19 tests during the height of the pandemic in 2020.

Trump’s campaign previously denied the reporting, but the Kremlin confirmed Trump sent the tests even though there was a shortage in the U.S.

When pressed by Bloomberg editor-in-chief John Micklethwait about the phone calls, Trump said, “I don’t comment on that, but I will tell you that if I did, it’s a smart thing.”

The Republican presidential nominee went on to repeatedly say “I don’t talk about that” when Micklethwait continued to ask him about Putin and launched into a lengthy aside about how he hoped to extract payment from European allies and South Korea for U.S. military protection. 

Trump also boasted of his “very good relationship” with Putin — who is accused of war crimes by the International Criminal Court for actions taken during his invasion of Ukraine — Chinese President Xi Jinping and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. 

But when it came to the details of his economic policies — major tariffs on allies and geopolitical foes alike, the elimination of vast swaths of federal regulations and boosting domestic manufacturing — he offered few details.

He repeatedly did not answer multiple questions from Micklethwait about how he would protect small businesses from the higher costs triggered by his planned tariffs, which economists and nonpartisan groups have said are all but inevitable if Trump follows through. Instead, he spoke of tariff exceptions he made for Apple, a $3.5 trillion company, during his first term and told an anecdote about a cabinet maker with thousands of employees who Trump claimed benefitted from his tariff policy.

“I saw the guy two, three days ago. He said, ‘I’m the man that saw you about kitchen cabinets. You saved my company, and you saved thousands of jobs, and my company is now doing very well. And he started to cry. Started to cry. And this is a guy who hasn't cried too much, I will tell you,” Trump said. “He said, ‘You saved my company. There's nobody that could have done that.’”

When asked what he will do to protect consumers from the high prices his tariffs are expected to cause, Trump denied that levying a tax on all imports into the country wouldn’t raise costs for Americans.

“Critics say your tariffs will end up being more or less a sales tax,” Micklethwait said. “If America, at the moment, has $3 trillion worth of imports. You’re going to add tariffs to every single one of them – that’s going to push up costs for all those people who want to buy foreign goods.”

“No,” Trump responded.

“It’s simple mathematics,” Micklethwait pushed back. 

“Yeah, it is, but the way you figure it. I was always very good at mathematics,” Trump said. “The higher the tariff, the more likely it is that the company will come into the United States and build a factory.”

When Micklethwait noted it could be years of high tariffs — and therefore high consumer costs — before companies could successfully relocate manufacturing to the U.S., Trump argued that if the “tariffs are going to be so high, so horrible, so obnoxious, they’ll come right away.”

Trump’s campaign heralded the event as a major success, sending out a press release that claimed the former president “put on a master class outlining his plan to return American citizens and businesses to the successes they enjoyed during his first term.”

“President Trump is at peak level at the Economic Club of Chicago. He's laying out common-sense economic proposals that will spur American growth and create more jobs,” Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung wrote on social media as Trump was on stage. “And the crowd is clapping and agreeing BIG LEAGUE!”

The Harris campaign saw things differently, calling Trump’s performance “rambling and angry” and pointing to a letter signed by 230 medical professionals calling on the 78-year-old former president to release his medical records. Vice President Kamala Harris, 59, released her records over the weekend. 

“In a single 64-minute interview, Donald Trump showed exactly why Americans can’t afford a second Trump presidency,” Harris campaign spokesperson Joseph Costello said in a statement. “An angry, rambling Donald Trump couldn’t focus, had to be repeatedly reminded of the topic at hand, and whenever he did stake out a position, it was so extreme that no Americans would want it. This was yet another reminder that a second Trump term is a risk Americans simply cannot take.”

Trump claims transfer of power was ‘peaceful’ after 2020 elections

Occasionally resorting to attacking Micklethwait, Trump also insisted the transition of power after the 2020 election was peaceful despite the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters. He claimed that there was “love and peace” in the crowd, even as those who descended on the Capitol smashed windows, rammed through doors and clashed violently with police, leaving more than 100 injured.

“It was a peaceful transition of power,” Trump said, without answering whether he would guarantee a peaceful transition if he loses this November. 

The friendly audience responded with boos when Micklethwait tried to dispute him.

Trump also repeated several other falsehoods in his response.

He claimed that “not one of those people had a gun” and that “Nobody was killed,” except Ashli Babbitt, a Trump supporter who was shot and killed by police.

In fact, five people died in the riot and its immediate aftermath, including Brian Sicknick, a police officer. Four additional officers who responded to the riot killed themselves in the following weeks and months.

A slew of rioters were carrying weapons, including firearms, knives, brass knuckle gloves, a pitchfork, a hatchet, a sledgehammer and a bow. They also used makeshift weapons, including flagpoles, a table leg, hockey stick and crutch, to attack officers. One rioter has been charged with climbing scaffolding and firing a gun in the air during the melee.

Trump also claimed that “a lot of strange things happened” and that rioters were waved into the building.

U.S. Capitol Police Chief J. Thomas Manger said in a memo that the allegation that “our officers helped the rioters and acted as ‘tour guides’” is “outrageous and false.” Manger said police were completely overwhelmed and outnumbered, and in many cases resorted to de-escalation tactics to try to persuade rioters to leave the building.

While there were cases where police retreated or stepped aside, there is no evidence that any rioter was “ushered” into the building.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.