The shocking new book by Bob Woodward claims that, despite a US shortage during the pandemic, then-president Donald Trump surreptitiously delivered Covid test kits to Vladimir Putin and communicated with the Russian leader several times after leaving office.
The forthcoming opus, “War,” also details some of the admitted mistakes made by President Joe Biden and his battle to stop the Middle East from becoming more unstable. This includes his frustration with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on their fruitless attempts to convince Israel and Hamas to agree to a cease-fire.
Excerpts from Woodward’s article, which was published on Tuesday by The Washington Post, where he works as an associate editor, expose a number of incriminating details and behaviors by Trump, who the author claims has maintained a personal connection with Putin despite the latter’s war against Ukraine, a US ally.
2020 saw the coronavirus wreaking havoc around the globe, so Trump dispatched some test kits to his Russian colleague. According to this book, Putin approved the supply but urged Trump not to disclose their delivery of medical equipment in order to prevent political repercussions for him.
According to Woodward, Putin told Trump: “I don’t want you to tell anybody because people will get mad at you, not me.”
Woodward also cites an unnamed Trump aide in the book who indicated the Republican flagbearer may have spoken to Putin up to seven times since leaving the White House in 2021.
The Post, reporting Woodward’s account, said that at one point in early 2024, Trump ordered an aide out of his office in his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida so he could hold a private call with Putin.
“War” is set for publication on October 15, just three weeks before a critical US election in which Trump is locked in a tight race against Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee.
While Harris does make appearances in the book, she is seen in a supporting role to Biden “and hardly determining foreign policy herself,” the Post reported.
Woodward has chronicled American presidencies for 50 years, and this is his fourth book since Trump’s upset victory in 2016. He began his presidential reportages with Richard Nixon, who was undone by the 1970s Watergate scandal exposed by Woodward and Post colleague Carl Bernstein.
Woodward concluded that Trump’s interactions, detailed in the book, with an authoritarian president at war with a US ally make him more unfit to be president 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 writes.
The Trump campaign blasted the book as “trash” and “made up stories.”
They are “the work of a truly demented and deranged man who suffers from a debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome,” campaign communications director Steven Cheung told AFP.
According to CNN, which obtained a pre-release book copy, Woodward repeatedly quotes Biden dropping F bombs as he discusses his personal and political challenges.
Biden called Putin “the epitome of evil,” blasted Netanyahu as a “liar” and said he “should never have picked” Merrick Garland as US attorney general.
According to the book, during an April phone call Biden turned testy with Netanyahu.
“What’s your strategy, man?” Biden asked the Israeli leader, according to Woodward.
“We have to go into Rafah,” Netanyahu said, referring to a city in southern Gaza.
“Bibi, you’ve got no strategy,” Biden responded.
