Former President Donald Trump's campaign lashed out at journalist Bob Woodward after he reported that Trump secretly sent Russian President Vladimir Putin a stash of COVID-19 tests at the height of the pandemic in 2020, when Americans couldn't get them.
However, Bloomberg reports that Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov is confirming that Trump sent Putin the tests four years ago, while at the same time denying Woodward's reporting that Trump and Putin have spoken multiple times since the ex-president the White House in 2021.
According to Woodward, Putin urged Trump to keep quiet about sending him the tests on the grounds that such a revelation would hurt the former president politically.
“Please don’t tell anybody you sent these to me,” Putin said, according to Woodward's sources.
“I don’t care,” Trump said in response. “Fine.”
“No, no,” Putin said. “I don’t want you to tell anybody because people will get mad at you, not me. They don’t care about me.”
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Despite Woodward's reputation as a first-rate and deeply sourced reporter, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung suggested on Tuesday that he lied about every single piece of information in his new book, which will be called "War."
"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," said Cheung, who provided no evidence to back up his claims. "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."