Trump spoke with Putin as many as 7 times after leaving office, new book reports
WASHINGTON ? Former President Donald Trump has spoken with Russian President Vladimir Putin as many as seven times since leaving the White House, according to reporting from a new book by journalist Bob Woodward.
The conversations cover a period before and after Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, a NATO ally the Biden administration has spent billions of dollars to support.
Woodward's book, titled "War," raises new questions about the relationship between Trump and Putin, a top U.S. adversary, one month before the Nov. 5 election between Trump, the 2024 Republican nominee, and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
While he was still president, Trump secretly shipped Putin COVID-19 testing machines when such testing was rare, Woodward reports in the book, a copy of which was obtained by USA TODAY in advance of an Oct. 15 release.
“Please don’t tell anybody you sent these to me,” Putin, who was fearful of infection, told Trump, Woodward writes. “I don’t care,” Trump replied. “Fine.”
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Trump campaign rejects 'made up stories'
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung rejected Woodward's reporting in a statement, calling it "made up stories" from a "truly demented and deranged man."
Cheung said Trump provided no access for the "trash book," adding that, "Woodward is a total sleazebag who has lost it mentally, and he's slow, lethargic, incompetent and overall a boring person with no personality."
Trump's running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, called Woodward "a hack" and said he didn't know the writer was still alive when asked about the book at a campaign rally in Detroit. Vance said he's never talked with Trump about the former president's phone calls with Putin.
"Even if it's true, look, is there something wrong with speaking to world leaders?" Vance said. "Is there anything wrong with engaging in diplomacy?"
Woodward, who has covered American presidents for 50 years, is best known for his reporting as a Washington Post reporter on the Watergate scandal during the Nixon administration. Woodward has authored more than 20 books on U.S. presidencies.
In "War," he recounts an episode in 2024 at Trump's Mar-a-Lago home in Florida in which the former president asked a senior aide to leave the room so he could conduct a phone call with Putin.
“According to Trump’s aide, there have been multiple phone calls between Trump and Putin, maybe as many as seven in the period since Trump left the White House in 2021,” Woodward writes.
Harris responded to Woodward's reporting that Trump sent COVID test kits to Putin during an appearance Tuesday on The Howard Stern Show.
"That is just the most recent stark example of who Donald Trump is – that he secretly sent COVID test kits for the personal use of Putin of Russia, an adversary to the United States," Harris said.
'Totally inappropriate'
Former top U.S. intelligence official Rolf Mowatt-Larssen said former presidents are traditionally given a lot of leeway in who they remain in touch with, but that virtually all of them have resisted talking to leaders of countries that are openly hostile to U.S. interests – especially during times when they are at war with American allies, as Russia is now with Ukraine.
“It’s totally inappropriate,” Mowatt-Larssen, whose 23 years at the CIA included two tours in Moscow, the second as station chief, told USA TODAY.
“Just the idea of him calling Putin, even if it's just a social call, which you have to assume is not, undermines U.S. policy by talking to a leader of a country that is war with an ally that we are supporting militarily and financially,” he said.
Alex Plitsas, a former U.S. defense and intelligence official, told USA TODAY, "For me, the most important piece of this will be what they were talking about. I’m sure they weren’t exchanging dinner recipes."
"What could go wrong?" quipped John Bolton, who served as Trump's national security advisor from April 2018 to September 2019 and has since become a vocal critic of the former president.
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White House feared Putin would use nuclear weapon, Woodward reports
Other revelations in the book detail President Joe Biden and his administration's outlook on the war in Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas conflict.
In September 2022, the Biden administration believed there was a 50% chance Russia would use a tactical nuclear weapon on Ukraine based on U.S. intelligence at the time, Woodward reports.
“That f---ing Putin,” Biden told advisers in the Oval Office shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to Woodward's book. “Putin is evil. We are dealing with the epitome of evil.”
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Biden also had profanity-laced assessments of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Woodward writes.
“That son of a bitch, Bibi Netanyahu, he’s a bad guy. He’s a bad f---ing guy!” Biden said of the Israeli prime minister to one of his associates in the spring of 2024 as Israel’s war in Gaza intensified, according to Woodward's book.
Trump has not said which side he supports two and a half years into Russia's war in Ukraine. The former president has said repeatedly that, if elected, he would end the conflict in less than 24 hours yet he's given no details how that would happen.
Trump last month met with Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy in New York, one day after Zelenskyy met with Biden and Harris at the white House. Trump has also met with Netanyahu and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán at Mar-a-Lago since leaving the White House.
Contributing: David Jackson. Reach Joey Garrison on X, formerly Twitter @joeygarrison.
(This story was updated to add new information.)
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump-Putin calls, reported in new Bob Woodward book