Trump secretly sent covid tests to Putin during 2020 shortage, new book says

Source: washingtonpost

48 Comments

  1. AutoModerator on

    This submission source is likely to have a soft paywall. If this article is not behind a paywall please report this for “breaks r/politics rules -> custom -> “incorrect flair””. [More information can be found here](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/wiki/index/#wiki_paywalls)

    *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/politics) if you have any questions or concerns.*

  2. washingtonpost on

    As the coronavirus tore through the world in 2020, and the United States and other countries confronted a [shortage of tests](https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2020/04/18/timeline-coronavirus-testing/?itid=lk_inline_manual_2) designed to detect the illness, then-President Donald Trump secretly sent coveted tests to Russian President Vladimir Putin for his personal use.

    Putin, petrified of the virus, accepted the supplies but took pains to prevent political fallout — not for him, but for his American counterpart. He cautioned Trump not to reveal that he had dispatched the scarce medical equipment to Moscow, according to a new book by Washington Post associate editor [Bob Woodward](https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/bob-woodward/?itid=lk_inline_manual_4).

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

    Four years later, the personal relationship between the two men appears to have persisted, Woodward reports, as Trump campaigns to return to the White House and Putin orchestrates his bloody assault on Ukraine. In early 2024, the former president ordered an aide away from his office at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida, so he could conduct a private phone call with the Russian leader, according to Woodward’s account.

    Read more here: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/10/08/bob-woodward-new-book-war-trump-putin-biden/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit.com](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/10/08/bob-woodward-new-book-war-trump-putin-biden/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit.com)

  3. What? Woodward says Trump has been on the phone to Putin, even now? This needs to be over all the airwaves pronto

  4. Orbitingkittenfarm on

    “But the unnamed Trump aide cited in the book indicated that the GOP standard-bearer may have spoken to Putin as many as seven times since Trump left the White House in 2021.”

  5. PhillipKDickens on

    There is no way they hand the federal government to Trump. The oath is to defend and protect the Constitution.  Trump is an enemy of our Constitution. Handing the government to him ends that. 

  6. TriflingHotDogVendor on

    Him calling Putin seven times since 2021, too. Media really burying the lede on that one.

    And Lindsay Graham described Mar a Lago as being “like North Korea.”. Which is hilarious, if not as important.

  7. Do you guys remember when Trump/Kushner stockpiled COVID supplies for their own “personal use” basically (which means they used it as a means of control and probably bribery) and left the states to fend for themselves? Additionally, remember reports that the federal governement under him at the time conviscating PPE and such from local supplies?

    Wonder where all that went…

  8. It shows that Trump accepted the fact that COVID was a serious threat as he immediately helped his buddy at the expense of American citizens.

  9. SockPuppet-47 on

    Thank God he didn’t do it while wearing a tan suit and eating a hot dog with fancy mustard while he did that. Otherwise the Republicans would have thrown a serious hissy fit.

  10. >book

    I wonder if the author can fit their book up their ass? So tired of people doing nothing at the time then cashing in

  11. Russiagate was real in 2016, real in 2020, and still real in 2024.

    Get this fuckin Russian puppet bitch out of our political system!

  12. spinningcolours on

    Will Trump be buried in Russia when he eventually dies? That would be an excellent pilgrimage for his maga cult.

  13. Why do these just come out as books when people leave the administration INSTEAD OF CASES WTF (o ya money)

  14. Quirky_Discipline297 on

    Treasonous, traitor, insurrectionist, rapist, embezzler, but the only three words that matter are rich, white, and GOP.

  15. Now we understand why Trump has hardly condemned Putin for invading Russia and favoured an end to the conflict that allows Putin to own part of Ukraine. This is treason. This is more than disqualifies Trump for the presidency.

  16. They need to get a federal wire tap on that guy’s phones. I think they have probable cause.

  17. It’s the hiding it that makes it worse.

    If Trump sent a few boxes solely for Putin to use and admitted it. I’d probably think it’s ridiculous but I’d understand that world leaders need to be cautious and that a dead Putin would destabilize Russia in a bad time. I understand why we need all world leaders to function.

    But the issue is he only sent them to Putin and no other leader. He hid the fact he did it. Putin asked him to lie, and he did. What a piece of shit

  18. I don’t know about this new book but Bob Woodwards other books were really interesting reads. Worth the price of admission just to read Trump’s love letters to Kim Jong Un even though he (Trump) was not smart enough to realize the guy writing him back was probably just some guy working for Kims administration and pulling on Trump’s heart strings pretending to be Kim. Very funny if you ignore that the guy (Trump) was the President of the United States.

  19. To this day, I’ll never understand how a near majority of Silents and Boomers (and even Gen Xers) turned from being anti-Russia, anti-Soviet Union, having grown up during the Cold War (and many having fought the Soviet Union in Korea, Vietnam…), to being pro-Russia in their support of Trump. There are a lot of insane things Trump has managed to get his supporters to believe, but the going soft on Russia one has to be one of the most befuddling. These people literally did a 180 on a country that dominated the second half of the 20th century as our biggest enemy both in peacetime and in war.

    Like, do they remember Rocky haha!?

  20. Democrats need to bring this up every chance they can. Trump is Putin’s puppet from the very beginning. He is just like Lukashenko and could turn the US into a Russian-communist satellite state like Belarus!

  21. hotbrownbeanjuice on

    It’s okay guys. He put some classified nuclear documents on top so no one would notice.

Leave A Reply