Woodward describes one incident where Trump instructed a senior aide to leave the room so he could have a private call with Putin.
Journalist Bob Woodward’s new book says Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin allegedly continued to interact after the former president left office.
The book, called War, alleges Trump and Putin have had as many as seven phone calls since early 2021 and that Trump asked one aide to leave the room so they could speak.
The book, obtained by CNN ahead of its release on October 15, draws from hundreds of hours of firsthand interviews and spotlights newly reported details of high-stakes confrontations during the Trump and Joe Biden presidencies.
Woodward, a veteran investigative journalist who along with Carl Bernstein broke the original news on the Watergate scandal for The in the early 1970s, also wrote about Biden’s profanity-laden comments about the Russian leader.
Reacting to the revelations Tuesday morning, Trump’s communications director Steven Cheung told Newsweek that Woodward’s book belonged in a “bargain bin.”
“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”, Cheung said in an emailed statement.
Woodward also wrote that Trump had become more erratic, citing conversations with South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who urged his ally to move on from his views that the 2020 election was stolen.
“Going to [Trump’s Florida estate] Mar-a-Lago is a little bit like going to North Korea”, Graham told Woodward. “Everybody stands up and claps every time Trump comes in.”Trump’s 7 Phone Calls Made to Putin
Woodward’s new book alleges that the Republican presidential nominee and Putin have had as many as seven phone calls since early 2021, when the Republican left the White House.
