Trump Lashes Out After Damning Report on His Close Ties to Putin
Donald Trump’s campaign team is lashing out against a journalist following news that the former president secretly kept in touch with Russian President Vladimir Putin after leaving the Oval Office.
A statement put out by Trump’s communications director, Steven Cheung, is rife with ad hominem attacks against journalist Bob Woodward, calling him a “total sleazebag,” “an angry, little man,” “a truly demented and deranged man,” and also “a boring person with no personality.”
In his new book, War, which Trump’s campaign says “belongs in the bargain bin of the fiction section of a discount bookstore,” Woodward writes that Trump has made at least seven calls to the Russian leader since leaving office. Trump also allegedly secretly gave Putin Covid-19 testing equipment during the early days of the pandemic.
“Please don’t tell anybody you sent these to me,” Putin told Trump, according to the author, out of concern for the backlash Trump would undoubtedly face. “I don’t care,” said Trump. “Fine.”
Woodward also says that in one incident at Mar-a-Lago earlier this year, Trump told a senior aide to leave so he could have “a private phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin.”
Accusing the investigative journalist of having “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” Trump’s team has denied his close relationship with Putin, stating that none of what Woodward writes is true, without any real rebuttal.
Following the news, Trump posted an edited clip of Robert Mueller on Truth Social, calling the investigation the “RUSSIA HOAX!”