In his new book, American journalist Bob Woodward, who participated in uncovering the Watergate scandal in the 1970s, writes about the fact that Trump and Putin spoke seven times after leaving the presidency.
“I won’t comment on that, but I will tell you that if it did, it would be a smart thing,” Trump now answered when asked if he had spoken with Putin. “If I am friends with someone, if I have a relationship with people, it is a good thing, not a bad thing when it comes to the country. He has 2000 nuclear weapons and so do we. China has fewer of them, but it will catch up with us within five years. If I have a relationship, I don’t talk about it,” he said.
Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump in an archive photo
In response to the agency’s subsequent remark that it sounded as if he was talking to Putin, Trump repeated that he would not talk about it. “I won’t say it, but I can tell you that Russia has never had a president who was so respected,” he added about Putin, who launched the biggest armed conflict in Europe since the end of World War II by invading Ukraine in February 2022.
“As for the calls, it’s a lie,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Reuters in early October. “There were no calls and no phone calls after Trump ceased to be president,” he added. He admitted, however, that Trump, still as president at the height of the covid-19 pandemic, had sent insufficient tests to Putin for his personal use.
Woodward claims the same thing. “He sent him a package of them. It’s like feeding your neighbors’ children when your own children are starving,” he noted in the new book War.
The Watergate case, which Woodward uncovered together with his colleague Carl Bernstein, led to the downfall of President Richard Nixon in the 1970s.