Trump allegedly secretly sent COVID tests to Putin in 2020

Photo: Susan Walsh archives Associated Press Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump at the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan, June 28, 2019

Agence France-Presse in Washington

Published yesterday at 9:58 p.m.

• United States

Donald Trump secretly sent COVID-19 tests to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin while he was in the White House during the coronavirus pandemic, when the United States was short on them, a new book by American journalism legend Bob Woodward reveals.

A chronicler of the White House for half a century with the Washington Post, Woodward, along with Carl Bernstein, exposed the Watergate scandal that led to President Nixon’s resignation in 1974. In his new book War,, out October 15, he also writes that Donald Trump has maintained a personal relationship with Vladimir Putin, despite Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and as he seeks to return to the White House.

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According to the account of American media that had access to the book, Vladimir Putin did indeed receive the anti-COVID tests and implored Donald Trump not to say anything: “I don’t want you to tell anyone, people will be angry with you, not with me,” the Russian president allegedly told him.

According to an adviser who remained anonymous, Donald Trump has spoken to Vladimir Putin in secret up to seven times since he left the White House in 2021. In early 2024, he asked an aide to come out of his office at the Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, to have a telephone conversation with the Russian president.

“None of these fabricated stories by Bob Woodward are true, this is the work of a truly insane and unbalanced man,” Steven Cheung reacted in a statement, one of the Republican presidential candidate's spokesmen, saying the book “could double as toilet paper.”

Kamala Harris expressed her side of the outrage. “Everybody in America was struggling to get kits … and this guy is sending them to Russia, to a murderous dictator, for his own personal use ?”

“This is just the latest and most egregious example of who Trump is,” the vice president added.

US President Joe Biden responded at an event in Pennsylvania on Tuesday night by denouncing Donald Trump’s “shameful” handling of the pandemic. “Over a million people have died but guess what ? … He called his friend Putin, this is not a joke, and made sure he got tests” when the US was short of them.

These revelations once again shine the spotlight on Donald Trump's relationship with Russia and risk reinforcing fears for the fate of Ukraine if the Republican returns to the White House.

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