Veteran journalist Bob Woodward raises big questions about their interactions.
Donald Trump’s cozy relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin is back under the microscope following a shocking report.
Veteran journalist Bob Woodward writes in his new book, War, that Trump sent Putin hard-to-find Covid-19 testing kits at the height of the global pandemic in 2020, which has drawn sharp criticism from Vice President Kamala Harris. And now, we’ve gotten a response from Russia: Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov confirmed that the former president did, in fact, send testing kits to Putin. However, according to Bloomberg, Peskov also shot down claims that the two leaders had spoken by phone several times since Trump left office.
“We also sent equipment at the beginning of the pandemic,” Peskov said in a written response to the news outlet when asked about the book. “But about the phone calls — it’s not true.”
The revelations have sparked outrage in Washington — and some déjà vu. As you might recall, there were similar questions about Trump and Putin’s ties just weeks before the 2016 election, when U.S. intelligence agencies released a statement warning of Russian meddling.
We took a closer look at what Woodward said in his upcoming book, which will be released on Oct. 15, and why some officials are calling Trump’s reported actions illegal.
Where did these claims come from?
A lot of attention has been centered on Woodward’s report about Trump giving Putin Covid test machines manufactured by Abbott Point of Care during a crippling shortage in the U.S. (and around the world). Secretary of State Mike Pompeo did publicly acknowledge in 2020 that these devices had been sent to Russia, but he didn’t disclose that it was for the Russian president’s personal use. (As Woodward’s book explains, Putin was terrified of catching the deadly illness.)
Another key detail that U.S. officials left out at the time was that Putin wanted Trump to hide the fact that the Covid-19 equipment had been sent in the first place. “I don’t want you to tell anybody because people will get mad at you, not me,” Putin told him, according to Woodward’s book. Trump replied, “I don’t care. Fine.”
Woodward also wrote that Trump and Putin have had “as many as seven” personal conversations since Trump left office in 2021. On one occasion, Trump even sent an unnamed aide away from his office so he could conduct a private phone call with Putin, according to the book.
Trump and his campaign have generally rebuffed the report. “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,” spokesman Steve Cheung wrote in a statement. (It’s worth noting that Woodward’s past reporting has won him two Pulitzer Prizes.)
However, if these private calls between Putin and Trump did happen, former White House adviser Susan Rice said they would be illegal under the Logan Act, which prohibits American citizens from directly negotiating with foreign adversaries like Russia without clearing it with the government.
“This would seem to be a violation of the Logan Act. Exactly what Trump falsely accused John Kerry of. Another apparent Trump crime,” Rice posted on X on Tuesday. She’s referring to when Trump tried to get Kerry prosecuted over his private meetings with Iranian officials about a nuclear deal. For the record, the former secretary of state was never charged with a crime, and he briefed the State Department of these discussions.
What do we know about Trump and Putin’s relationship?
The ex-president’s connection with the Russian strongman has long been a source of controversy. Throughout his presidency, Trump repeatedly praised Putin for his crackdowns against the press and demands of total loyalty among government officials. This continued even after Trump left office, when he praised Putin for being “smart” and “genius” for invading Ukraine. “I’d say that’s pretty smart. He’s taking over a country – really a vast, vast location, a great piece of land with a lot of people, and just walking right in,” Trump said in 2022.
According to The New York Times, Trump has mentioned the Russian leader by name during 41 campaign rallies this year — far more often than in any year since he first started running for office in 2015.
Apparently, these warm feelings are mutual. Putin once called Trump “bright and talented” and complimented his vow to end Russia’s war with Ukraine if he were reelected. “We cannot help but feel happy about it,” Putin said.
Trump’s affinity for authoritarian rulers is no secret. While speaking at a rally in 2018, President Trump said that he and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un “fell in love.” Then, as recently as March, the former president hosted Hungary’s authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán at his Mar-a-Lago estate and openly applauded Orbán’s autocratic style of rule.
“Let me just say about world leaders, Viktor Orbán, one of the most respected men, they call him a strongman,” Trump said at the time. “He’s a tough person. Smart prime minister of Hungary.”
What are critics saying?
After the reporting from Woodward’s book broke on Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris condemned Trump’s ties to Putin and embrace of dictators, asserting that the Republican nominee wants to be one himself.
“I believe that Donald Trump has this desire to be a dictator,” she said during an interview on Howard Stern’s show on Tuesday. “He admires strongmen, and he gets played by them because he thinks that they’re his friends, and they are manipulating him full-time — manipulating him by flattery and with favor.”
She also seized on reports that the former president secretly sent the Russian leader Covid tests. “Everybody was scrambling to get these kits,” she told Stern. “This guy who is president of the United States is sending them to Russia, to a murderous dictator, for his personal use.”
Similarly, Biden called out his former rival during a speech in Pennsylvania on Tuesday. “What the hell’s wrong with this guy?” the president told the crowd, referring to Trump.
