Woodward book reveals Trump’s calls with Putin and Biden’s private remarks on Obama and Netanyahu
WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump has had as many as seven private phone calls with Vladimir Putin since leaving office and secretly sent the Russian president COVID-19 test machines during the height of the pandemic, Bob Woodward reported in his new book, “War.”
The famed Watergate reporter also details President Joe Biden’s frustrations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ’s assortment of burner phones. The Associated Press obtained an early copy of the book, which is due out next week.
Trump denied the reporting, telling ABC News’ Jonathan Karl that Woodward is “a storyteller. A bad one. And he’s lost his marbles.”
Trump had previously spoken to Woodward for the journalist’s 2021 book, “Rage.” Trump later sued over it, claiming Woodward never had permission to publicly release recordings of their interviews for the book. The publisher and Woodward denied his allegations.
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Woodward reports that Trump asked an aide to leave his office at his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, so that the former president could have a private call with Putin in early 2024. The aide, whom Woodward doesn’t name, said there have been multiple calls between Trump and Putin since Trump left office, perhaps as many as seven, according to the book, though it does not detail what they discussed.
Trump senior adviser and longtime aide Jason Miller told Woodward that he had not heard Trump was having calls with Putin and said, “I’d push back on that.” But Miller also said, according to the book, “I’m sure they’d know how to get in touch with each other.”
Steven Cheung, Trump’s communications director, said none of the stories in Woodward’s books are true. In a statement on Tuesday, he called them “the work of a truly demented and deranged man who suffers from a debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the reporting about the calls was “not true.”
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.
U.S. intelligence agencies later determined that Russia had meddled in the 2016 election to help Trump, though an investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller found no conspiracy between the Trump team and Russia. In 2018, Trump publicly questioned that finding following an in-person meeting with Putin in Helsinki.
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.
Woodward reports that Trump sent Putin COVID-19 test machines for his personal use as the virus began spreading in 2020.
Putin told Trump not to tell anyone because people would be mad at Trump over it, but Trump said he didn’t care if anyone knew, according to the book. Trump ended up agreeing not to tell anyone.
The book doesn’t specify when the machines were sent but describes it as being when the virus spread rapidly through Russia. It was previously reported by The Associated Press and other agencies that Trump’s administration in May 2020 sent ventilators and other equipment to several countries, including Russia.
“There were no secret shipments. The pandemic was starting back then,” Peskov said Wednesday via a messaging app. “Many countries were exchanging equipment. We sent ventilators. Testers came from America.”
Vice President Kamala Harris, in an interview Tuesday with radio host Howard Stern, accused Trump of giving the machines to a “murderous dictator” at a time when “everyone was scrambling” to get tests.
“This person who wants to be president again, who secretly is helping out an an adversary while the American people are dying by the hundreds every day,” said Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate.
Biden highlighted the report during a stop in Pennsylvania on Tuesday.
“You see what came out today?” Biden said at a fundraiser for Sen. Bob Casey. “So he calls his good friend Putin — not a joke — and makes sure he had the tests. He had the tests.”
The book also details Biden’s complicated relationship with Netanyahu as well as private moments when the president has been fed up with him over the Israel-Hamas war.
Biden’s “frustrations and distrust” of Netanyahu “erupted” this past spring, Woodward writes. The president privately unleashed a profanity-laden tirade, calling him a “son of a bitch” and a “bad f——— guy,” according to the book. Biden said he felt, in Woodward’s accounting, that Netanyahu “had been lying to him regularly.” With Netanyahu “continuing to say he was going to kill every last member of Hamas.” Woodward wrote, “Biden had told him that was impossible, threatening both privately and publicly to withhold offensive U.S. weapons shipment.”
Biden and Netanyahu have long been acquainted, although their relationship has not been known to be close or overly friendly. Last week, Biden said he didn’t know whether the Israeli leader was holding up a Mideast peace deal in order to influence the outcome of the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
Asked about the book’s reporting, White House spokesperson Emilie Simons told reporters Tuesday that “The commitment that we have to the state of Israel is ironclad.”
Simons, when pressed on the details, said she wouldn’t comment on every anecdote that may come out in reporting. She added of Biden and Netanyahu: “They have a long-term relationship. They have a very honest and direct relationship, and I don’t have a comment on those specific anecdotes.”
The book details Biden’s criticism late last year of President Barack Obama’s handling of Putin’s earlier invasion of Ukraine, when Russia seized Crimea and a section of the Donbas in 2014, at a time when Biden was serving as the Democrat’s vice president.
“They f----- up in 2014,” Woodward wrote that Biden said to a close friend in December, blaming the lack of action for Putin’s actions in Ukraine. “Barack never took Putin seriously.”
Biden was angry while speaking to the friend and said they “never should have let Putin just walk in there” in 2014 and that the U.S. “did nothing.”
Woodward reports Biden was privately furious with Attorney General Merrick Garland for appointing a special counsel to investigate Biden’s son Hunter in a tax-and-gun prosecution.
“Should never have picked Garland,” Biden told an associate, according to Woodward. The journalist did not name the associate.
Hunter Biden was convicted in June on federal gun charges and faces sentencing in federal court in Delaware in December. He pleaded guilty to federal tax charges in California and is also set to be sentenced in that case in December.
The Justice Department declined to comment.
One of Trump’s longest-term allies, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, blamed Trump’s ongoing false claims that the 2020 election was rigged to a cult of personality in which the former president’s ensconcement at Mar-a-Lago and circle of aides and advisers “constantly feed this narrative,” according to the book.
The weekend after Russia invaded Ukraine, Graham was with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, which the senator characterized as “a little bit like going to North Korea.” Graham added that “everybody stands up and claps every time Trump comes in.”
On politics, Woodward wrote that Graham’s counsel was part of what persuaded Trump to run again for the presidency.
In March, during one of his many visits to the Middle East since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, Graham told Woodward that he had been meeting with the Saudi crown prince when Graham suggested they call Trump. From “a bag containing about 50 burner phones,” Prince Mohammed “pulled out one labeled ‘TRUMP 45.’” On another trip, Woodward wrote, the Saudi leader retrieved another burner phone, “this time labeled JAKE SULLIVAN ” when the men called Biden’s national security adviser.
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Price reported from New York. Associated Press writers Hillel Italie in New York, Eric Tucker and Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington and Aamer Madhani aboard Air Force One contributed to this report.