Trump, Putin and top secret phone calls: “Don’t tell anyone about it”

Donald Trump helping Vladimir Putin during the covid pandemic. The facts date back to 2020, as Bob Woodward, leading writer of the Washington Post, reconstructs in his new book ‘War’. Putin, dealing with the coronavirus emergency, received help from the then President of the United States. Trump sent the Kremlin leader supplies of tests and swabs for personal use. A welcome gift, even if inconvenient.

“I don’t want you to tell anyone, people would take it out on you. Not me”, Putin reportedly said to his ‘colleague’ as he accepted the gift. The bond between the Russian president and the former US president, according to Woodward, has remained strong over the years. At the beginning of 2024, Trump and Putin spoke in a private phone call: The Donald, from his residence in Mar-a-Lago in Florida, asked an assistant to leave the room and, once alone, made the phone call.

The details of the conversation are not known. According to Trump’s collaborator, an anonymous source cited by the journalist, there have been at least 7 talks with Putin since 2021, when the former president’s mandate ended. “Trump has been the most reckless and impulsive president in American history and is demonstrating the same character as a candidate for president in 2024,” Woodward writes in his volume, in statements to which the Trump campaign has not responded.