Former President Trump said that any telephone conversations he may have had with Vladimir Putin since leaving office were a “smart thing,” though he declined to confirm the recently reported calls during an appearance at the Economic Club of Chicago on Tuesday.

“I don’t comment on that,” Trump said. “But I will tell you that if I did, it’s a smart thing. If I’m friendly with people, if I have a relationship with people, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing, in terms of a country. [Putin’s] got 2,000 nuclear weapons, and so do we.”

The comments were the latest in a long line of remarks in which Trump has praised the president of Russia, whom Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris recently called a “murderous dictator.”

Citing an unnamed source, a new book by veteran political journalist Bob Woodward reportedly says that Trump and Putin have spoken as many as seven times since Trump left office more than three years ago. Released Tuesday, the book, “War,” also reveals that Trump, while president, sent the Russian leader COVID-19 testing equipment for his own use.

When pressed on the topic by Q&A moderator John Micklethwait, editor in chief of Bloomberg News, Trump added, “I don’t talk about that. I don’t ever say it. But I can tell you what, Russia has never had a president that they respect so much.”

Speaking in front of a friendly audience over the course of roughly an hour, Trump shared his views on tariffs, monetary policy and the Federal Reserve. But he also went on meandering digressions, such as one that covered the safe return of a SpaceX Super Heavy-Starship rocket on Sunday (“I said, ‘What the hell … !’”), and even tried out a French accent while relating a squabble he’d had with Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, over a threatened import tax on wine (“He’s a wise guy”).

On the subject of tariffs, Trump championed his plan to put them on various imported items.

Tariffs, Trump said, are “for protection of the companies that we have here and the new companies that will move in, because we’re going to have thousands of companies coming into this country. … We’re going to protect them when they come in, because we’re not going to have somebody undercut them.”

The nonpartisan Tax Foundation has reported that tariffs imposed by the Trump administration in 2018 and 2019 amounted to “nearly $80 billion worth of new taxes on Americans.”

“I’m a believer in tariffs,” Trump said. “To me, the most beautiful word in the dictionary is ‘tariff.’ It’s my favorite word. It needs a public relations firm.”

Later, Micklethwait invoked the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to ask Trump if he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power after the November election.

But Trump never directly answered the question, and falsely said there had been a peaceful transfer after the 2020 election, despite the storming of the Capitol, which saw more than 100 people injured and one attendee, Ashli Babbitt, fatally shot by a law enforcement officer. “It was love and peace. And some people went to the Capitol, and a lot of strange things happened there,” said Trump, who shared other falsehoods about Jan. 6.

When Micklethwait asked the question again, Trump said of the journalist, “This is a man that has not been a big Trump fan over the years.”

Trump’s discursive appearance also saw him squabble with Micklethwait over a pejorative nickname for California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and ridicule the moderator for his fiscal views. “You’ve been wrong all your life on this stuff,” Trump said, eliciting laughter from the crowd.

A Harris campaign spokesperson said the interview “was yet another reminder that a second Trump term is a risk Americans simply cannot take.”

“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,” spokesperson Joseph Costello said in a statement.

The former president’s campaign moved quickly to position the appearance in Chicago as a win, sending out an email that said the former president “was in his element as he spoke passionately about restoring economic growth, prosperity, and opportunity for all Americans.”

“Kamala could NEVER,” the message said.

Micklethwait said that the Chicago club had invited Harris — whom Trump mentioned only fleetingly — to participate in a similar conversation, but she had “declined so far.”

On Tuesday, Trump also planned to rally voters in Atlanta and spoke with conservative media host Glenn Beck for his BlazeTV online program. He argued that immigration is voters’ greatest priority.

“The biggest thing that people are going to be looking at and voting on is what’s happening at our border where murderers are allowed to come in and where drug dealers are allowed to come in and just destroy our country. Literally destroy it,” he told Beck.

Harris frequently argues that Trump killed a bipartisan immigration bill that would have increased the number of agents at the border and reduced the flow of fentanyl into the U.S. because he was more concerned about keeping the issue alive to boost his election prospects than in solving the problem.

Trump also said he was serious about tasking billionaire SpaceX founder Elon Musk with reeling in federal spending.

“He feels there’s tremendous fraud, waste and abuse,” Trump said. “He could save a lot of money and make lives better.”

Times staff writer Seema Mehta in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

Charter Communications, the company that runs the SportsNet channels for the Dodgers and Lakers, is cutting back programming on those channels.

Live coverage of the Dodgers and Lakers games is not expected to be affected. Instead, Charter is canceling “Behind the Sport” and reducing new episodes of “Backstage: Dodgers” and “Backstage: Lakers” to one per month, according to company spokeswoman Maureen Huff.

The Dodgers and Lakers are among many teams that have launched channels so fans could get 24/7 access to their favorite team. However, viewership data in Los Angeles and elsewhere has shown that most fans are primarily interested in watching the game.

Huff said “a few positions” have been eliminated.

“These programming adjustments are routine and do not signal any broader operational changes,” Huff said.

The changes come amid turmoil in the regional sports network industry. As consumers increasingly abandon cable and satellite broadcasts in favor of streaming, broadcast rights deals that pay teams based on an economic model of subscribers paying for a regional sports network, whether they watch it or not, have become outdated and often unprofitable.

The Bally Sports channels have been in bankruptcy court for 19 months. Warner Bros. Discovery last year dumped its four regional sports networks.

Charter runs no other regional sports network besides the SportsNet channels, which it inherited when it bought Time Warner Cable in 2016.

As a profitable company that generated $55 billion in revenue last year by providing broadband, cable, streaming and telephone services, Charter could not escape its $8.35-billion contract with the Dodgers or its $3-billion contract with the Lakers by filing for bankruptcy.

Lon Rosen, the Dodgers’ executive vice president, said Dodgers fans should not be concerned about SportsNet LA, which Charter markets under the Spectrum brand.

“We continue to have a good working relationship with Spectrum,” Rosen said.

The Dodgers own SportsNet LA. However, Charter owns SportsNet and has registered it as a separate entity. So, in theory, Charter could essentially tell the Lakers what Bally Sports told the Angels: Renegotiate at a discount, or risk SportsNet filing for bankruptcy, which could mean even less money for the team in a streaming-first future.

“Nothing like that has occurred,” said Tim Harris, the Lakers’ president of business operations. “Spectrum is an amazing partner and we look forward to working with them for years to come.”

One of downtown Los Angeles’ familar tenants is pulling up stakes as the office rental market continues to contract from shrinking occupancy stoked by the pandemic.

Financial services firm Wedbush Securities has begun its move from a prominent office tower to Pasadena, where it will occupy much smaller offices meant to accommodate employees who now work remotely much of the time.

The firm is leaving behind Wedbush Center, which overlooks the Harbor Freeway and sports two signs on top bearing the company name. Wedbush has been headquartered in the Wilshire Boulevard building since 2001 and its lease expires next year.

“It’s a big deal, a very big decision for the firm,” President Gary Wedbush said of the move. “The pandemic and COVID created a different kind of office for us.”

With most employees required to be in the office only a third of the time, Wedbush is creating an office oriented toward shared workspaces that can be used as needed by various employees instead of assigned desks, he said.

The move was also influenced by the changed nature of downtown’s financial district since thousands of office workers departed during the COVID-related shutdown and probably won’t return again in pre-pandemic numbers. Many shops and restaurants remain closed and office tenants have said the streets feel less safe than they used to.

Although Wedbush said “downtown has been fantastic for us,” other locations have become more attractive. “There are places like Pasadena that seem to have recovered more fully from the pandemic than downtown Los Angeles has. That was a part of the decision-making” to move.

The firm leases more than 100,000 square feet at Wedbush Center but will occupy about 20,000 square feet in an office complex on Lake Avenue in one of Pasadena’s leading commercial districts.

“The amenities on Lake Avenue are fantastic,” Wedbush said. “Casual restaurants to really fine dining, fitness centers — it just had everything.”

Wedbush’s move, which will take place formally in the first half of 2025, reflects a trend that has been affecting downtown and much of Los Angeles County for the last few years, real estate brokerage CBRE said in a recent report on office leasing.

“The Greater Los Angeles office market continued its search for the bottom” in the third quarter, CBRE said, as both tenants and landlords “navigate the ongoing supply and demand imbalance exacerbated by the shift to hybrid and remote work.”

Companies adapting to new work models are leaving behind large chunks of office space, and the change is particularly noticeable downtown, where CBRE said overall vacancy is more than 30%, triple the amount considered to be a healthy balance between tenant and landlord interests.

Wedbush Securities’ shift to hybrid work, with people in the office some days and not others, created the chance to make a different kind of office with a smaller footprint and more shared spaces to collaborate or work away from a traditional desk, Wedbush said.

About 70% of the office will be considered “hotel” space where employees can choose a workstation on days they are present while the remaining 30% will be offices for financial advisors and others who need privacy to meet with clients.

A stark difference will be that the shared workstations will be around the windows with views of the city and the offices will be in the center of the building. In the old arrangement, individual offices were much larger and occupied the prime space along the windows, Wedbush said.

One of the two floors Wedbush Securities leased in Pasadena has a rooftop deck that Wedbush plans to make into an outdoor office space with conference tables, workstations where people can plug in their computers and places to unwind.

“It’s not just going to be a couple of tables and umbrellas,” he said. “The opportunity to build out this new space was a big driver in us moving out of our building that we’ve loved for so, so many years.”

Wedbush Securities was co-founded in 1955 by Wedbush’s father, Edward, in Los Angeles and now has close to 900 employees in 28 cities across the country, Wedbush said. “We’re really proud of our Los Angeles legacy.”

Wedbush’s decision to dramatically shrink its headquarters underscores not only the continued struggles of the office rental market in the wake of the pandemic but broader vulnerabilities in commercial real estate throughout L.A. County.

A report released by real estate services firm NAI Capital said that in the third quarter of 2024, Los Angeles County’s commercial real estate market experienced a sharp 18.4% year-to-date decline in sales volume and a rise in real estate cap rates, a metric used to estimate an investor’s rate of return based on the income that the property is expected to generate.

It may be a low point in the real estate cycle for property sales, NAI Capital Chief Executive Chris Jackson said.

“With cap rates on the rise, California regulations, and high interest rates throughout 2024, the commercial real estate market took a bit of a dip” with office properties “hit particularly hard,” Jackson said. “However, with interest rates expected to decline more substantially in 2025, we anticipate a significant rebound in real estate sales.”

Sales are being further limited by taxes and government fees, particularly Measure ULA, the property transfer tax in Los Angeles that took effect in 2023, the report said. Dubbed the “mansion tax,” Measure ULA imposed a 4% tax on real estate transactions over $5 million and a 5.5% tax on those exceeding $10 million. In June, those thresholds increased to $5.15 million and $10.3 million.

The tax has contributed to a nearly 40% year-over-year drop in sales of office, retail, industrial and multifamily properties, or $1.9 billion below last year’s total, the report said.