A spokesman for the Kremlin confirmed this week that Donald Trump sent COVID-19 tests to Russian President Vladimir Putin but denied the former president has kept in contact after leaving the White House.
Excerpts from journalist Bob Woodward’s book War leaked this week, in which the veteran reporter alleges that Trump clandestinely shared COVID-19 tests with Russia.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Bloomberg on Wednesday that the tests were indeed sent to Russia but claimed that they were part of a mutually beneficial sharing agreement.
“We also sent equipment at the beginning of the pandemic,” Peskov told the outlet.
Other leaked passages from the book relayed testimony attributed to a Trump aide that the former president has been in regular contact with Putin since the end of his term in the Oval Office.
Woodward claims the source can confirm that Trump and Putin have spoken over the phone at least seven times since President Joe Biden took office in 2020.
Peskov told Bloomberg that such conversations did not take place.
“About the phone calls — it’s not true,” Peskov said.
War is explicitly positioned against Trump in its promotional material and leaked excerpts, claiming the former president is a dangerous and reckless leader.
The Trump camp has dismissed the book and characterized it as a political hack job driven by a political vendetta.
“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,” Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said of the book in a statement. “Woodward is an angry, little man and is clearly upset because President Trump is successfully suing him because of the unauthorized publishing of recordings he made previously.”
Trump is suing Woodward for $50 million after the journalist published interview tapes recorded while Trump was president in 2019 and 2020.
Woodward’s legal team fought to dismiss the suit in September 2023, but the case is ongoing.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“President Trump gave him absolutely no access for this trash book that either belongs in the bargain bin of the fiction section of a discount bookstore or used as toilet tissue,” Cheung continued. “Woodward is a total sleazebag who has lost it mentally, and he’s slow, lethargic, incompetent and overall a boring person with no personality.”
Woodward began writing War as a report on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but it was expanded to include the Middle East following the devastating terrorist attacks on Israel in 2023.