Elon Musk joins Donald Trump on stage at Butler rally
Elon Musk joined Donald Trump on stage at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, the site of the July assassination attempt.
WASHINGTON − Former President Donald Trump has spoken with Russian President Vladimir Putin as many as seven times since leaving the White House, according to reporting from a new book by journalist Bob Woodward.
The conversations cover a period before and after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, a NATO ally the Biden administration has spent billions of dollars to support.
Woodward’s book, titled “War,” raises new questions about the relationship between Trump and Putin, a top U.S. adversary, one month before the Nov. 5 election between Trump, the Republican nominee, and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
While he was still president, Trump secretly shipped Putin COVID-19 testing machines when such testing was rare, Woodward reports in the book, copies of which were provided to the New York Times, Washington Post and CNN in advance of an Oct. 15 release.
“Please don’t tell anybody you sent these to me,” Putin, who was fearful of infection, told Trump, Woodward writes, according to CNN.
“I don’t care,” Trump replied. “Fine.”
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Trump campaign rejects report as ‘made up stories’
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung rejected Woodward’s reporting in a statement, calling it “made up stories” from a “truly demented and deranged man.”
Cheung said Trump refused to be interviewed for the book, adding, “Woodward is a total sleazebag who has lost it mentally, and he’s slow, lethargic, incompetent and overall a boring person with no personality.”
Woodward, who has covered American presidents for 50 years, is best known for his reporting as a Washington Post reporter on the Watergate scandal during the Nixon administration. Woodward has authored more than 20 books on U.S. presidencies.
In “War,” he recounts an episode in 2024 at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida in which the former president asked a senior aide to leave the room so he could conduct a phone call with Putin, according to the New York Times.
“According to Trump’s aide, there have been multiple phone calls between Trump and Putin, maybe as many as seven in the period since Trump left the White House in 2021,” Woodward writes in the book.
Harris campaign spokesman Ian Sams responded to the reporting on X, formerly known as Twitter: “Uhhhhhh. Why has Trump kept having private 1:1 calls with Putin as a private citizen?” Sams wrote.
‘Totally inappropriate’
Former top U.S. intelligence official Rolf Mowatt-Larssen said former presidents are traditionally given a lot of leeway in who they remain in touch with, but that virtually all of them have resisted talking to leaders of countries that are openly hostile to U.S. interests – especially during times when they are at war with American allies, as Russia is now with Ukraine.
“It’s totally inappropriate,” Mowatt-Larssen, whose 23 years at the CIA included two tours in Moscow, the second as station chief, told USA TODAY.
“Just the idea of him calling Putin, even if it’s just a social call, which you have to assume is not, undermines U.S. policy by talking to a leader of a country that is war with an ally that we are supporting militarily and financially,” he said.
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White House feared Putin would use nuclear weapon, Woodward reports
Other revelations in the book detail President Joe Biden and his administration’s outlook on the war in Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas conflict.
In September 2022, the Biden administration believed there was a 50% chance Russia would use a tactical nuclear weapon on Ukraine based on U.S. intelligence at the time, Woodward reports, according to CNN.
“That f—ing Putin,” Biden told advisers in the Oval Office shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to CNN’s account of Woodward’s book. “Putin is evil. We are dealing with the epitome of evil.”
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Biden also had profanity-laced assessments of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Woodward writes.
“That son of a bitch, Bibi Netanyahu, he’s a bad guy. He’s a bad f—ing guy!” Biden said of the Israeli prime minister to one of his associates in the spring of 2024 as Israel’s war in Gaza intensified, according to CNN’s account of Woodward’s book.
Trump has not said which side he supports two and a half years into Russia’s war in Ukraine. The former president has said repeatedly that, if elected, he would end the conflict in less than 24 hours yet he’s given no details how that would happen.
Trump last month met with Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy in New York, one day after Zelenskyy met with Biden and Harris at the white House. Trump has also met with Netanyahu and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán at Mar-a-Lago since leaving the White House.
Reach Joey Garrison on X, formerly Twitter @joeygarrison.