Donald Trump secretly sent Putin a COVID-19 test kit during the pandemic

Washington: In an explosive new book, Bob Woodward claims that, despite a US shortage during the epidemic, then-president Donald Trump surreptitiously delivered COVID-19 test kits to Vladimir Putin and communicated with the Russian leader many times after leaving office.

The renowned reporter’s masterpiece also details some of President Joe Biden’s own admitted blunders and his battle to stop the Middle East from becoming more violent. This includes his frustration with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over their fruitless attempts to get Israel and Hamas to agree to a truce.

Excerpts from Woodward’s book War were released on Tuesday, October 8, by The Washington Post, where he works as an associate editor. Woodward claims that despite Trump’s quest for a second term and Putin’s war against US partner Ukraine, the two men continue to have a personal connection.

2020 saw the coronavirus outbreak, so Trump sent some highly sought-after testing to his Russian counterpart. According to the book, Putin approved the supplies but urged Trump not to disclose their delivery of medical equipment in order to prevent political repercussions for him.

Putin reportedly said to Trump, “I don’t want you to tell anybody because people will get mad at you, not at me.” Woodward said this.

In addition, Woodward quotes an unidentified Trump adviser who said that after leaving the White House in 2021, the Republican leader may have talked to Putin up to seven times—despite the US’s efforts to support Ukraine in fending off a Russian invasion and the sharp deterioration of ties with Moscow.

According to The Post, which reported Woodward’s story, at one point in early 2024, Trump gave an order for an assistant to leave his office at his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, because he wanted to have a private conversation with Putin, an ex-KGB agent.

Tuesday, during a Pennsylvania senatorial campaign rally for Bob Casey, Biden called the manner in which Trump handled the outbreak a “disgrace.”.

More than a million people perished. However, surprise! He phoned Putin, a real buddy, and made sure the man got the exams, Biden recalled.

Three weeks before a crucial US election in which Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are in a close contest, on October 15, War hits bookstores.

Although Harris, a Democrat, is mentioned in the book, the Post noted that she is only given a supporting role to Biden and “hardly determining foreign policy herself.”

Harris said that Trump had been “played” and influenced amid a health crisis in which people were “dying by the hundreds every day” in response to a question about the book posed by well-known radio personality Howard Stern on Tuesday.

“Everybody was scrambling to get kits, and Trump is sending them to Russia, to a murderous dictator for his personal use,” Harris said.

The Trump campaign described the book as “fabricated stories.”

Woodward has written four books since Trump’s shocking win in 2016. He has spent fifty years documenting American presidents. In the 1970s, Woodward and Post colleague Carl Bernstein unearthed the Watergate crisis, which brought Richard Nixon to his knees. Woodward then started his presidential reporting career with him.

Woodward came to the conclusion that Trump is even less qualified for office than Nixon because of his dealings with an autocrat who is at war with a US ally.

“Trump was the most reckless and impulsive president in American history and is demonstrating the very same character as a presidential candidate in 2024,” says Woodward.

The book was denounced by the Trump campaign as “made-up stories.”.

According to spokesperson Steven Cheung, they are “the work of a truly demented and deranged man who suffers from a debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome,” AFP said.

Trump has given Putin a lot of praise. The Republican famously asked Moscow to “find” thousands of Hillary Clinton’s emails during the 2016 campaign.

Despite the fact that a special counsel’s probe revealed no collusion between the Trump team and Moscow, US intelligence services subsequently assessed that Russia had influenced that election in favor of Trump.

A pre-release copy of Woodward’s book was acquired by the media, which claims that Woodward cites the usually well-mannered Biden profanity throughout his discussion of his personal and political struggles.

Biden denounced Netanyahu as a “liar,” referred to Putin as “the embodiment of evil,” and said that he “should never have picked” Merrick Garland to be US attorney general.