Newly revealed audio shows Donald Trump claiming to donors that he threatened to bomb Moscow if Vladimir Putin attacked Ukraine.
Journalists Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager and Isaac Arnsdorf obtained audio tapes recorded at fundraisers last year as Trump campaigned for re-election in Florida and New York, and CNN aired excerpts of those Tuesday night as the reporters promote their new book 2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America.
“With Putin, I said ‘If you go into Ukraine, I’m going to bomb the s--- out of Moscow,” Trump told donors. “‘I’m telling you I have no choice,' and then [Putin] goes, like, ‘I don’t believe you.’ But he believed me 10 percent.”
Trump later told donors he gave a similar warning to Chinese president Xi Jinping over a potential invasion of Taiwan, claiming he told the world leader the U.S. would bomb Beijing in response.
“He thought I was crazy,” Trump said, but added that “we never had a problem.”
The audio recordings show an even more unrestrained side to Trump's public persona as he appealed to wealth donors by threatening to deport student protesters and complaining that “the welfare people” will always vote for Democrats.
“One thing I’d do is any student that protests, I would throw them out of the country,” Trump said at a closed-door fundraiser, saying he would crack down on pro-Palestinian demonstrations on college campuses. “Those people made a big mistake. Throw them out of the country, and I think that will stop it."
“If you get me elected," he added, "we will set that movement back 25 to 30 years."
Trump also boasted that he successfully pressured a billionaire donor to write him a bigger check.
“He wants to have lunch with me over a million dollars,” he said of the donor. “I said, ‘You’re worth $5 [billion] or $6 billion, you’re talking about a million dollars, and I got to have lunch? I’m not having lunch. You got to make it 25 million, and he said, ‘Oh, that sounds like a lot,' and he did it. He gave me $25 million. It’s crazy.”
