Trump sent Covid tests to Putin for personal use in early 2020, book says
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As the U.S. and other countries rushed to find enough COVID-19 tests for sick people in early 2020, then-President Donald Trump reportedly sent coronavirus tests to Russian President Vladimir Putin for his personal use, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bob Woodward wrote in his upcoming book, "War."
According to The Washington Post, which read excerpts of Woodward’s book ahead of its Oct. 15 release, Putin was "petrified" of contracting the virus that sparked a global pandemic and welcomed the tests sent by Trump.
But Putin reportedly told Trump not to tell anyone that he sent the coveted tests.
Then-US President Donald Trump attends a meeting with Russias President Vladimir Putin during the G20 summit in Osaka on June 28, 2019. (Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)
"I don’t want you to tell anybody because people will get mad at you, not me," Putin reportedly told Trump.
The Kremlin confirmed the report to Bloomberg on Wednesday, a day after Trump denied it to ABC News.
"We also sent equipment at the beginning of the pandemic," Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said in a statement to Bloomberg.
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Trump's relationship with Putin has been scrutinized since his 2016 campaign for president, when he memorably called on Russia to find and make public missing emails deleted by Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent. "Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing," he said.
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In recent years, Trump has criticized U.S. 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.
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Woodward’s upcoming book – his fourth since Trump won the presidency in 2016 – is described by its publisher, Simon & Schuster, as a "revelatory, behind-the-scenes story of three wars—Ukraine, the Middle East and the struggle for the American Presidency."
Its release date is just weeks ahead of the Nov. 5 presidential election. Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are locked in a close race, with Harris clinging to a 3-point lead in the latest New York Times/Siena College poll.
In the book, Woodward describes Harris as a "shrewd and loyal No. 2 to Biden but not an influential voice in his administration’s foreign policy," The Washington Post reports.
Woodward concludes that Trump is unfit for office, while President Joe Biden and his team exhibited "steady and purposeful leadership," despite some mistakes on foreign policy, including the administration’s inability to prevent escalation in the Middle East.
"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 the book.
Woodward, a Washington Post associate editor whose coverage of Watergate led to Richard Nixon’s resignation in August 1974, also claims in "War" that Trump and Putin may have spoken up to seven times since Trump left the White House in 2021.
Both the Kremlin and Trump’s campaign deny those allegations.
"None of these made-up stories by Bob Woodward are true," Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung told The Post. "[The book] either belongs in the bargain bin of the fiction section of a discount bookstore or used as toilet tissue."