“As the coronavirus swept across the world in 2020 and the United States, like other countries, lacked tests to detect the disease, President Donald Trump secretly sent highly coveted screening tools to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, for his personal use”, écrit The Washington Post.
“Petrified by the virus, Putin accepted this delivery but took care to prevent possible political fallout – not for him, but for his American counterpart,” according to the new book by Bob Woodward, the daily’s most famous journalist.
“Four years later, according to Woodward, the personal relationship between the two men appears to have continued,” continues Washington Post. “[Un] An anonymous Trump aide quoted in the book claims the Republican presidential nominee has spoken with Putin up to seven times since leaving the White House in 2021.”
“These interactions with the authoritarian leader of a country at war with a U.S. ally lead Woodward to conclude that Trump is worse than Richard Nixon, whose presidency foundered with the Watergate scandal, revealed half a year ago. century by Bob Woodward and his colleague from Washington Post Carl Bernstein.”
Difficult to verify
A few weeks before the presidential election of November 5, voters are once again confronted with the question of the links between Donald Trump and Putin’s Russia, accused of interference in 2016, observes The New York Times.
This scoop caused a stir in the American media, even if the New York daily specifies that “other journalists were unable to confirm these post-employment contacts,” no more than twenty former government and intelligence officials contacted by the newspaper. Furthermore, “Woodward bases this claim on a single unidentified collaborator,” and himself “acknowledged in his work that he had not been able to verify it with other sources”.
The legendary reporter, whose book War will be published next week, “regularly publishes bestsellers with explosive revelations”. The New York Times notice that “some of his fellow journalists have questioned his methods. On the other hand, many of his most memorable scoops have been largely corroborated over the years by subsequent investigations or memoirs.”
While the Trump campaign team denigrated “fabricated stories”, and the Kremlin “bogus story” outing in an electoral context, the Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris, criticized her opponent, repeating the allegation about the screening devices sent to Putin “for personal use”. His campaign even “broadcast a campaign message on social networks”, reports the New York Times.
