In Bob Woodward’s latest book, the journalist claims that Donald Trump sent Russian President Vladimir Putin Covid-19 tests in 2020, when the supplies were hard to come by, the Washington Post reports.
Woodward makes the claim in War, his latest book about contemporary U.S. politics, following Fear, Rage, and Peril.
Putin cautioned Trump, who was U.S. president at the time, to keep the shipment a secret, saying, “I don’t want you to tell anybody because people will get mad at you, not me.”
Woodward also reports that Trump and Putin remained in contact after Trump’s 2020 election defeat. Earlier this year, he writes, the two had a private phone conversation; an aide told Woodward that they may have spoken seven times while Joe Biden was president.
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for U.S. president, reacted to Woodward’s claims on the Howard Stern Show, telling the radio host, “People were dying by the hundreds. Everybody was scrambling to get these kits, the Covid test kits. Couldn’t get them, couldn’t get them anywhere. And this guy who was president of the United States is sending them to Russia, to a murderous dictator, for his personal use.”
War, which publisher Simon & Schuster calls “an intimate and sweeping account of one of the most tumultuous periods in presidential politics and American history,” is set for publication on Oct. 15, three weeks before Election Day.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
