It’s no secret that Donald Trump is a big fan of dictators, and that one dictator specifically has his coronary heart. We converse, in fact, of Vladimir Putin (although Kim Jong Un is certainly getting flowers and sweet on Valentine’s Day too). As president of america, Trump sided with Putin over his personal intelligence officers. He has an countless provide of fine issues to say concerning the Russian authoritarian, having known as him a “genius” and “savvy” for invading Ukraine. He has defended Putin over (credible) accusations that the Russian president has had journalists and dissidents murdered. He has brazenly known as on Putin to assist him take down Joe Biden. Ought to he win one other time period in workplace, many fear he’ll reduce off help to Ukraine, and let Russia take over. And in accordance with a brand new report, he has saved in very, very shut contact together with his favourite despot in recent times.
The New York Occasions experiences that in a brand new ebook—Warfare, out subsequent week—veteran journalist Bob Woodward reveals that Trump “has secretly spoken with President Vladimir V. Putin…as many as seven instances since leaving workplace, at the same time as he was pressuring Republicans to dam navy help to Ukraine to battle Russian invaders.” In a single scene, Woodward writes that in early 2024, the ex-president ordered an aide to depart his workplace at Mar-a-Lago so he might converse with Putin by cellphone. That aide, in accordance with Woodward, estimates that Trump and Putin may need spoken on half a dozen different events since Trump left the White Home in 2021.
Because the Occasions notes, “former presidents meet with overseas counterparts after leaving workplace once in a while,” and Trump has hosted Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban at Mar-a-Lago. However these conferences weren’t a secret, and “it could be extremely uncommon for a former president to privately speak with a prime American adversary like Mr. Putin with out clearing it with the present administration—particularly at a time when america and Russia are on reverse sides of a conflict in Europe.” However, Trump does quite a lot of issues which might be “extremely uncommon,” like attempting to steal a second time period in workplace after dropping an election.
And talking of surprising:
The Trump marketing campaign has, in fact, attacked Woodward, calling him “a complete sleazebag” who’s “sluggish, torpid, incompetent, and total a boring individual with no persona,” and claiming, “None of those made-up tales by Bob Woodward are true and are the work of a very demented and deranged man who suffers from a debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
Throughout an interview that aired on 60 Minutes final evening, Kamala Harris warned voters, “Donald Trump, if he have been president, Putin could be sitting in Kyiv proper now. He talks about, ‘Oh, he can finish it on day one.’ what that’s? It’s about give up.”
