Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump, attends an Oct. seventh remembrance occasion on the Trump Nationwide Doral Golf Membership on October 07, 2024 in Doral, Florida. | Picture by JOE RAEDLE | Getty Photographs through AFP
WASHINGTON, United States — Then-president Donald Trump secretly despatched Covid check kits to Vladimir Putin regardless of a US scarcity throughout the pandemic, and spoke a number of occasions with the Russian chief after leaving workplace, Bob Woodward says in an explosive new guide.
The famed reporter’s opus additionally chronicles a few of President Joe Biden’s personal acknowledged missteps and his battle to stop escalation of battle within the Center East, together with exasperation with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over futile efforts to get Israel and Hamas to achieve a ceasefire.
In excerpts of “Struggle” printed Tuesday by The Washington Publish, the place Woodward is an affiliate editor, he says Trump retains a private relationship with Putin whilst he campaigns for an additional time period and the Russian president conducts a battle towards US ally Ukraine.
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With the coronavirus raging in 2020, Trump despatched a batch of coveted assessments to his counterpart in Moscow. Putin accepted the provides however sought to keep away from political fallout for Trump, urging he not reveal the dispatch of medical gear, the guide says.
Based on Woodward, Putin instructed Trump: “I don’t need you to inform anyone as a result of folks will get mad at you, not me.”
Woodward additionally cites an unnamed Trump aide who indicated the Republican chief could have spoken to Putin as much as seven occasions since leaving the White Home in 2021 — regardless of the US effort to assist Ukraine resist Russian invasion and the extreme deterioration of relations with Moscow.
The Publish, reporting Woodward’s account, mentioned that at one level in early 2024, Trump ordered an aide out of his workplace in his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida as a result of he wished to carry a personal name with ex-KGB officer Putin.
At a marketing campaign occasion Tuesday for Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey, Biden mentioned the best way Trump dealt with the pandemic was a “shame.”
“Over one million folks died. However guess what… he referred to as his good pal, Putin, not a joke, and made certain he had the assessments,” Biden mentioned.
READ MORE: Trump on the stump, Harris hits airwaves in razor-edge US election
“Struggle” hits bookshelves October 15, simply three weeks earlier than a important US election through which Trump is locked in a good race towards Vice President Kamala Harris.
Whereas Democrat Harris seems within the guide, she is seen in a supporting function to Biden “and hardly figuring out international coverage herself,” the Publish reported.
Harris, requested in regards to the guide Tuesday by common radio host Howard Stern, mentioned Trump had been “performed” and manipulated throughout a well being calamity that noticed People “dying by the a whole bunch day-after-day.”
“All people was scrambling to get kits (and Trump) is sending them to Russia, to a murderous dictator for his private use,” Harris mentioned.
‘Made-up tales’
Woodward has chronicled American presidencies for 50 years, and that is his fourth guide since Trump’s upset victory in 2016. Woodward started his presidential reportages with Richard Nixon, who was undone by the Nineteen Seventies Watergate scandal uncovered by Woodward and Publish colleague Carl Bernstein.
Woodward concluded that Trump’s interactions with an authoritarian president at battle with a US ally make him extra unfit for the presidency than Nixon.
“Trump was probably the most reckless and impulsive president in American historical past and is demonstrating the exact same character as a presidential candidate in 2024,” Woodward writes.
The Trump marketing campaign blasted the guide as “made-up tales.”
They’re “the work of a really demented and deranged man who suffers from a debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome,” spokesman Steven Cheung instructed AFP.
Trump has repeatedly praised Putin. In the course of the 2016 marketing campaign, the Republican memorably urged Moscow to “discover” hundreds of Hillary Clinton’s emails.
US intelligence companies later concluded Russia had meddled in that election in Trump’s favor, though a particular counsel’s investigation discovered no conspiracy between the Trump camp and Moscow.
Based on CNN, which obtained a pre-release guide copy, Woodward quotes the outwardly mild-mannered Biden swearing as he discusses his private and political challenges.
Biden referred to as Putin “the epitome of evil,” blasted Netanyahu as a “liar” and mentioned he “ought to by no means have picked” Merrick Garland as US legal professional normal.
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