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Trump secretly stayed in touch with Putin after leaving office, new Woodward book says

October 8, 2024

Donald Trump has secretly spoken with Vladimir Putin as many as seven times since leaving office—even as he was pressuring Republicans to block military aid to Ukraine to fight Russian invaders—according to a new book by the journalist Bob Woodward, reports The New York Times.

The book, titled “War” and scheduled to be published next week, describes a scene in early 2024 at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s estate in Florida, when the former president ordered an aide out of his office so he could conduct a phone call with Putin. The unidentified aide said the two may have spoken a half-dozen other times as well since Trump left the White House.

The book also reports that Trump, while still in office early during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, secretly sent Putin what were then rare tests for the virus for the Russian’s personal use. Putin—who has been described as particularly anxious about being infected at the time—urged Trump not to publicly reveal the gesture because it could damage the American president politically.

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

The disclosures raise new questions about Trump’s relationship with Putin just weeks before an election that will determine whether the former president will reclaim the White House. A copy of the book was obtained by The New York Times.

The Washington Post, where Woodward has worked for more than half a century, and CNN, where he often appears as a commentator, also reported on the book on Tuesday, October 8.

Meanwhile, Trump’s campaign dismissed Mr. Woodward’s book by assailing the author with typically personal insults—“a total sleazebag,” “slow, lethargic, incompetent and overall a boring person with no personality”—without addressing any of the specifics reported in it.

“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,” Steven Cheung, the campaign communications director, said in the statement. Cheung said Trump did not give Woodward access for the book and noted that the former president was suing the author over a previous book.

The statement did not explicitly say whether Trump has spoken with Putin since leaving office, but the former president’s oft-expressed affinity for the master of the Kremlin has long baffled even his own appointees.

Research contact: @nytimes