CHICAGO (AP) — Former President Donald Trump declined Tuesday to say whether he has spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin since leaving office, as reported in journalist Bob Woodward’s latest book. But if the two spoke, Trump said, it would be “smart” for the United States.
Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, was pressed on his communications with the Russian president during a wide-ranging – and at times controversial – interview with Bloomberg editor-in-chief John Micklethwait at the Economic Club of Chicago. Woodward reports in his book “War” that Trump has had as many as seven private phone conversations with Putin since leaving the White House and secretly sent the Russian president COVID-19 testing machines during the height of the pandemic.
A Trump campaign spokesperson previously denied the report. During Tuesday’s interview, Micklethwait asked the question directly to Trump: “Can you say yes or no, regardless of whether you’ve spoken to Vladimir Putin since you’re no longer president?”
“I don’t comment on that,” Trump responded. “But I’ll tell you, if I did, it was smart. If I am friends with people, if I can have a relationship with people, that is a good thing and not a bad thing in terms of a country.”
Trump said Putin, who invaded neighboring Ukraine and has been accused of war crimes by the International Criminal Court, is highly respected in Russia and praised his relationship with him, as well as with the authoritarian leaders of North Korea and China.
“Look, I had a very good relationship with President Xi and a very good relationship with Putin, and a very good relationship with Kim Jong Un,” he said. About Putin, he later added, “Russia has never had a president they respect so much.”
Woodward reported that Trump asked an aide to leave his office at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida so that the former president could have a private conversation with Putin in early 2024. The aide, who does not name Woodward, said there have been several conversations between Trump and Putin since Trump left office, perhaps as many as seven, according to the book, although it does not detail what they discussed.
Trump spokesman Steven Cheung called the reporting false. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said reports of the calls were “not true.”
Trump’s relationship with Putin has been under scrutiny since his 2016 campaign for president, when he memorably called on Russia to find and make public missing emails deleted by Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent. Trump publicly sided with Putin on whether Russia meddled in the 2016 election to help him, and Trump has criticized U.S. aid to Ukraine as it tries to fend off the Russian attack.
Later in Tuesday’s interview, Trump declined to say whether he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he lost the November election. He also claimed that there had been a peaceful transition of power after the 2020 election, despite his supporters’ violent attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
“Come on. You had a peaceful transfer of power compared to Venezuela,” Micklethwait responded.
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Nations reported from New York.
