Trump’s secret calls with Putin and Biden’s private remarks on Obama and Netanyahu

Washington: Donald Trump secretly sent COVID-19 tests to Russian President Vladimir Putin when they were in short supply during the pandemic, according to an explosive new book by acclaimed investigative journalist Bob Woodward.

And in response, Putin reportedly told the then-US president: “I don’t want you to tell anybody because people will get mad at you.”

With less than a month until the US election, the book sheds new light on the ongoing relationship between Trump and Putin, at a time when Republicans want to curb military funding to Ukraine and as worries persist about Moscow’s influence on the former president.

Donald Trump’s relationship with Vladimir Putin has been scrutinised since his 2016 campaign for president.Credit: Bloomberg, AP

Citing an unnamed Trump aide, the famed Watergate journalist writes that Trump and Putin have spoken “maybe as many as seven” times since Trump left the White House.

The Trump campaign hit out at the book, with spokesman Steven Cheung saying: “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.”

The revelations were made in Woodward’s latest book, War, which also details President Joe Biden’s frustrations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his criticism of former president Barack Obama.

But they could prove sensitive for the Republican nominee amid ongoing concerns about foreign countries meddling in the upcoming election.

In a briefing to reporters this week an official from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence warned that “Moscow is leveraging a wide range of influence actors in an effort to influence congressional races, particularly to encourage the US public to oppose pro-Ukraine policies and politicians”.

“On the presidential race, the Intelligence Community continues to assess that Russia prefers the former president and Iran prefers the vice president,” the official added.

Vice President Kamala Harris seized on the book’s revelations during an interview on Howard Stern’s radio show on Tuesday (Wednesday AEDT), telling listeners that this is “just the most recent stark example of who Donald Trump is”.

“In the height of the pandemic – and remember, and your listeners will remember, people were dying by the hundreds,” Harris said.

“Everybody was scrambling to get these kits, the tests, the COVID test kits, couldn’t get them, couldn’t get them anywhere. And this guy, who was president of the United States, is sending them to Russia to a murderous dictator for his personal use.”

Harris’ interview formed part of a friendly media blitz day that also included appearances on the talk show The View and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

Earlier, the Democratic presidential nominee appeared on CBS’s 60 Minutes, where she was also asked how she would confront Russia over its war in Ukraine.

Harris said she would not meet with Putin to negotiate an end to the war without Ukrainian representation.

“Ukraine must have a say in the future of Ukraine,” she said.

Trump, meanwhile, has made no secret of his respect for Putin, saying last month that their relationship was “very good”.

He said the same of his relationship with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky when the pair met at Trump Tower in New York last month, to discuss how to end the war should Trump return to power.

“We both want to see this end, and we both want to see a fair deal made,” Trump said at the time.

Woodward’s book also details Biden’s complicated relationship with Netanyahu, particularly over the Israel-Hamas war.

Biden’s “frustrations and distrust” of Israeli prime minister “erupted” this past northern spring, Woodward writes. The president believed Netanyahu “had been lying to him regularly” and privately unleashed a profanity-laden tirade, calling him a “son of a bitch” and a “bad f--- guy,” according to the book.

The book reveals Biden’s criticism late last year of Obama’s handling of Putin’s earlier invasion of Ukraine, when Russia seized Crimea and a section of the Donbas in 2014, when Biden was vice president.

“They f----- up in 2014,” Woodward wrote that Biden said to a close friend in December, blaming the lack of action for Putin’s moves in Ukraine. “Barack never took Putin seriously.”

Woodward also wrote Biden was privately furious with Attorney-General Merrick Garland for appointing a special counsel to investigate Biden’s son Hunter in a tax-and-gun prosecution.

Hunter Biden was convicted in June on federal gun charges and faces sentencing in federal court in Delaware in December. He pleaded guilty to federal tax charges in California and is also set to be sentenced in that case in December.

“Should never have picked Garland,” Biden told an unnamed associate, according to Woodward.

With AP

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