Donald Trump ‘spoke to Vladimir Putin seven times since leaving office and sent him Covid19 tests’
An explosive new book by Bob Woodward alleges Joe Biden regularly launched into profane tirades against Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu, while his predecessor was playing phone tag with the Russian leader.
Donald Trump may have spoken to Vladimir Putin up to seven times since leaving office and as president sent the Russian leader Covid-19 testing equipment, according to veteran journalist Bob Woodward’s explosive new book, War, on the Biden administration.
Joe Biden regularly launched into profanity-laced tirades against the Russian president and also Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to the incendiary tome set for release next week, and possessed intelligence that pointed to a 50 per cent likelihood Moscow would deploy tactical nuclear weapons as its invasion of Ukraine floundered in late 2022.
Less than a month out from the US presidential election excerpts of the book rocked US politics on Tuesday (Wednesday AEST), revealing a stressed White House and president navigating extremely tense times during the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, facing off against Russia, and trying to rein in Israel as it sought security in the Middle East after the October 7 massacre.
Woodward, a Washington Post associate editor who shot to fame reporting on the Watergate scandal that engulfed Richard Nixon in the 1970s, revealed Biden’s disdain for the Israeli prime minister, whom he termed during one exchange with “that son of a bitch, Bibi Netanyahu, he’s a bad guy. He’s a bad f..king guy”, according to hundreds of hours of interviews with largely anonymous sources.
Only Putin – “that f..king Putin” – appeared to fair worse in the president’s esteem, declaring the Russian leader, with whom he had a “hot 50 minute phone call” leading up to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, “evil … We are dealing with the epitome of evil” according to a book CNN and the New York Times received an advance copy of.
But it was Woodward’s revelations about the former president that attracted most attention, fuelling Democrat claims that Trump was and is too close to the Russian leader, to the point where the latter cared for Trump’s political standing.
“Please don’t tell anybody you sent these to me,” Putin allegedly said to Trump, according to Woodward, after the then president secretly sent a bunch of Abbott Point of Care Covid test machines to Moscow for Putin’s personal use during the height of the pandemic in 2020.
“I don’t want you to tell anybody because people will get mad at you, not me. They don’t care about me,” the Russian leader supposedly added.
The most explosive allegation about Trump-Putin communications post his departure from office in January 2021 related to a time at Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago, when Trump asked a senior staffer to leave the room so “he could have what he said was a private phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin”.
“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.
Trump’s campaign team vigorously denied all the claims in the book about Trump on Tuesday, slamming War via spokesman Steven Cheung as “the work of a truly demented and deranged man who suffers from a debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome”.
Woodward, who also wrote four books on the Trump presidency and numerous others on his predecessors, concluded Biden exhibited “steady and purposeful leadership”, while Trump was worse than Nixon.
“Trump was the most reckless and impulsive president in American history and is demonstrating the very same character as a presidential candidate in 2024,” Woodward wrote in his book set to be released October 15.
The book outlined serious disagreements between Washington and Israel over the latter’s military strategy following the October 7 terrorist attack that saw 1,200 Israelis slaughtered, which weren’t aired publicly.
“Bibi, what the f..k?” the US president yelled at Netanyahu after an Israeli air strike killed a top Hezbollah military commander and three civilians in Beirut in July, according to the book. “You know the perception of Israel around the world increasingly is that you’re a rogue state, a rogue actor,” Biden added, in quotes obtained by CNN.
“He’s a f..king liar,” Biden said privately of the Israeli leader after the IDF entered Rafah in May, the book alleges.
Other notable vignettes and revelations include Republican senator Lindsay Graham’s observations that Mar-A-Lago had become “a little bit like going to North Korea … Everybody stands up and claps every time Trump comes in”.
The crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, possessed dozens of burner phones marked with the names of internationally significant figures, including one labelled TRUMP 45 and another JAKE SULLIVAN, which he would use to communicate with such individuals in private.
Former president George Bush allegedly phoned Joe Biden after the latter’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan saw the deaths of 13 American troops and dozens of Afghanis.
“Oh boy, I can understand what you’re going through … I got f..ked by my intel people, too,” the former republican president said to Biden.
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