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Trump’s Putin buddy revealed: Phone calls and Covid tests

JD Vance criticises Bob Woodward

Source: X

Donald Trump has had several private phone calls with Vladimir Putin since leaving office and secretly sent the Russian president Covid-19 test machines, according to a new book.

The allegations about the US Republican presidential candidate are revealed in a book by famed Watergate reporter Bob Woodward.

It also details President Joe Biden’s frustrations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s assortment of burner phones.

The Associated Press obtained an early copy of the book, which will be released next week.

Steven Cheung, Trump’s communications director, denied the accounts in the book.

“None of these made up stories by Bob Woodward are true and are the work of a truly demented and deranged man who suffers from a debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome,” Cheung said on Wednesday (US time).

Later, Trump’s running mate JD Vance dismissed Woodward as “a hack”.

“What little I know about Bob Woodward is that he is … a hack, the guy’s a hack,” he said at a rally in Michigan.

“Have I talked to Donald Trump about his calls to Vladimir Putin? I’ve never had that conversation with Donald Trump in my life. But if Donald Trump, even if he – look, is there something wrong with speaking to world leaders? No. Is there anything wrong with engaging in diplomacy?”

Woodward reports that Trump asked an aide to leave his office at his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, so that the former US president could have a private call with Putin in early 2024.

The aide, whom Woodward doesn’t name, said there had been up to seven calls between Trump and Putin since Trump left office in 2021.

Trump’s relationship with Putin has been scrutinised since his 2016 campaign for president, when he memorably called on Russia to find and publish emails deleted by his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.

“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” he said.

US intelligence agencies later determined that Russia had meddled in the 2016 election to help Trump.

An investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller found no conspiracy between the Trump team and Russia. In 2018, Trump publicly questioned that finding following a meeting with Putin in Helsinki.

In recent years, Trump has criticised US support for Ukraine as it fights off Russia’s invasion.

He has said Ukraine should have made concessions to Putin before Russia invaded in 2022. He also previously touted his good relationship with Putin and called the Russian leader “pretty smart” for invading Ukraine.

Woodward also reports that Trump sent Putin Covid-19 test machines for his personal use as the virus began spreading in 2020.

Putin told Trump not to tell anyone because people would be angry.

According to the book, Trump said he didn’t care, although he eventually agreed to keep it a secret.

The book doesn’t specify when the machines were sent but describes it as being when the virus spread rapidly through Russia.

It was previously reported by AP and other agencies that in May 2020 Trump’s administration sent ventilators and other equipment to several countries, including Russia.

In an interview with radio host Howard Stern on Tuesday, Trump’s election rival, US Vice President Kamala Harris, accused Trump of giving the machines to a “murderous dictator” at a time when “everyone was scrambling” to get tests.

“This person who wants to be president again, who secretly is helping out an an adversary while the American people are dying by the hundreds every day,” she said.

In other revelations from Woodward, one of Trump’s longest-term allies, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, said the former president’s continued false claims about the 2020 election were due to a cult of personality at his base at Mar-a-Lago, where a circle of aides and advisers “constantly feed this narrative”.

Graham was with Trump at Mar-a-Lago on the weekend after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. He characterised the Florida mansion as “a little bit like going to North Korea”.

“Everybody stands up and claps every time Trump comes in,” Graham said.

On politics, Woodward wrote that Graham’s counsel was part of what persuaded Trump to run again for the presidency in 2024.

In March, during one of his many visits to the Middle East since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, Graham told Woodward that he was with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman when Graham suggested they call Trump.

From “a bag containing about 50 burner phones”, Prince Mohammed “pulled out one labelled ‘TRUMP 45’ “.

On another trip, Woodward wrote, the Saudi leader retrieved another “burner phone, this time labelled: ‘JAKE SULLIVAN’ ” when the men called Biden’s national security adviser.

The book also details Biden’s complicated relationship with Netanyahu, as well as private moments when the US President has been frustrated over the Israel-Hamas war.

Biden’s “frustrations and distrust” of Netanyahu “erupted” this past northern spring, Woodward writes.

Biden privately unleashed a profanity-laden tirade, calling the Israeli PM a “son of a b—h” and a “bad f—ing guy”, according to Woodward.

Biden said he felt, in Woodward’s accounting, that Netanyahu “had been lying to him regularly”.

Netanyahu was “continuing to say he was going to kill every last member of Hamas”, Woodward wrote.

“Biden had told him that was impossible, threatening both privately and publicly to withhold offensive US weapons shipment,” he writes.

Biden and Netanyahu have known each other for years, although their relationship is not considered close or overly friendly.

Last week, Biden said he didn’t know whether the Israeli leader was holding up a Middle East peace deal to try to influence the outcome of November’s US presidential election.

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