Donald Trump compared an image of Kamala Harris on the cover of Time magazine with his wife, Melania, during an interview with Elon Musk.

The former president attacked his rival for the White House on several issues but appeared complimentary when referring to the publication’s illustration of Ms Harris.

“She looked very much like our great first lady, Melania,” Trump told Mr Musk, in an interview on X, as the pair discussed the cover image of Monday’s issue.

“She didn’t look like Kamala, but of course, she’s a beautiful woman, so we’ll leave it at that.”

Time’s latest cover story on Harris is headlined “Her Moment” and features a black-and-white illustration of the vice-president.

Ms Harris declined to be interviewed for the article and her reluctance to engage with one-on-one media interviews – since replacing Joe Biden as the Democrats’ presidential candidate – has been seized upon by Republicans.

Trump called it a “free ride” from the media and said sarcastically that the Time image presented her as if she was “the most beautiful actress ever to live”.

At other points during the interview, Trump was more critical of his opponent, labelling her a “San Francisco radical” and suggesting she would struggle with dealing with world leaders on the international stage.

One international issue that Trump himself was quizzed on by Mr Musk, the X owner and chief executive of electric vehicle company Tesla, was the need to tackle global warming.

Trump, whose main business is property development, bizarrely joked about the potential financial benefits of rising sea levels.

“The biggest threat is not global warming, where the ocean is going to rise one-eighth of an inch over the next 400 years,” he told Mr Musk.

“You’ll have more ocean-front property, right? The biggest threat is not that. The biggest threat is nuclear warming, because we have five countries now that have significant nuclear power, and we have to not allow anything to happen with stupid people like Biden.”

Trump also used the question to launch into a tangent about the need for solar panels on cars. “It just seems like something that at some point you will come up with. I’m sure you’ll be the first,” he told Mr Musk, before admitting that the issue was “not my world”.