Guess Who Really Likes Vladimir Putin?!

Some quick thoughts on Bob Woodward's latest revelations.

Photo by rob walsh on Unsplash

The hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World is in London for the next few days, stocking up on tea participating in a “Sanctions 2024” conference run by Chatham House (with support from the Fletcher School). Posting will be pretty light.

I see that while I was wending my way across the Atlantic, however, a preview of the new Bob Woodward joint dropped. There are a variety of spicy details, but the Washington Post’s Isaac Stanley-Becker hones in on the splashiest details:

As the coronavirus tore through the world in 2020, and the United States and other countries confronted a shortage of tests designed to detect the illness, then-President Donald Trump secretly sent coveted tests to Russian President Vladimir Putin for his personal use.

Putin, petrified of the virus, accepted the supplies but took pains to prevent political fallout — not for him, but for his American counterpart. He cautioned Trump not to reveal that he had dispatched the scarce medical equipment to Moscow, according to a new book by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward.

Putin, according to the book, told Trump, “I don’t want you to tell anybody because people will get mad at you, not me.”

Four years later, the personal relationship between the two men appears to have persisted, Woodward reports, as Trump campaigns to return to the White House and Putin orchestrates his bloody assault on Ukraine. In early 2024, the former president ordered an aide away from his office at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida, so he could conduct a private phone call with the Russian leader, according to Woodward’s account.

The book does not describe what the two men purportedly discussed, and it quotes a Trump campaign official casting doubt on the supposed contact. But the unnamed Trump aide cited in the book indicated that the GOP standard-bearer may have spoken to Putin as many as seven times since Trump left the White House in 2021 (emphasis added by me because WTF?!).

Here’s how CNN covers that portion of Woodward’s book:

In 2020, Woodward writes, Trump had “secretly sent Putin a bunch of Abbott Point of Care Covid test machines for his personal use.”

During the height of the pandemic, Russia and the United States did exchange medical equipment such as ventilators. But Putin — who infamously isolated himself over fears of Covid — told Trump on a phone call to keep the delivery of the Abbott machines quiet, Woodward reports.

“Please don’t tell anybody you sent these to me,” Putin said to Trump, according to Woodward.

“I don’t care,” Trump replied. “Fine.”

“No, no,” Putin said. “I don’t want you to tell anybody because people will get mad at you, not me. They don’t care about me.”

Woodward writes that Trump has stayed in touch with Putin after leaving office….

Woodward asked Trump aide Jason Miller whether Trump and Putin had spoken since he left the White House. “Um, ah, not that, ah, not that I’m aware of,” Miller told Woodward.

“I have not heard that they’re talking, so I’d push back on that,” Miller added.

Woodward writes that Biden’s Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines “carefully hedged” when asked about whether there were any post-presidency Trump-Putin calls.

“I would not purport to be aware of all contacts with Putin. I wouldn’t purport to speak to what President Trump may or may not have done,” Haines said, according to Woodward.

The New York Times’ Peter Baker reports that the Kremlin has denied the story along with the Trump campaign, while adding, “It would be highly unusual for a former president to privately talk with a top American adversary like Mr. Putin without clearing it with the current administration — especially at a time when the United States and Russia are on opposite sides of a war in Europe.” As a longtime reader of the New York Times I can confirm that sentence is Gray Lady-speak for, “What the fuck?! What the fucking fuck?!”

Let’s parse this reporting into the two pieces of information. First, that Trump sent covid tests to Putin when they were scarce in the United States; and second, that Trump and Putin have maintained contact during his post-presidential years.

There is a theoretical universe where the President of the United States sending scarce Covid tests to the President of the Russian Federation during a time of bilateral tensions would be considered a shrewd bit of diplomacy. Helping out a germophobic ruler on a small courtesy can generate some diplomatic goodwill that might pay off in the future. In theory this would be one of those small steps that could be lay the groundwork for some diffuse reciprocity down the road.

In the real world, however, this is Donald Trump helping his biggest autocratic man-crush. The most telling aspect of this story is that the public did not know about it until now. Trump obeyed Putin’s request and kept his mouth shut even though he blabs about everything to everybody. Why would an ordinarily undisciplined human being not cop to this particular fact? That raises a huge red flag.

The same problem recurs with Trump’s post-presidential conversations with Putin. Again, in and of itself the conversations are not completely shocking. Trump has met with other current leaders like Viktor Orban and Benjamin Netanyahu. Other ex-U.S. presidents have also conferred with current heads of foreign governments after their time on office.

You want to know the difference with this particular case? That Trump and Putin kept quiet about it! That is, to use some complex international relations terminology, super-shady on Trump’s part.

The hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World can only speculate about what Trump and Putin discussed. But the staff is in complete agreement with Kamala Harris on the danger of Trump being in Putin’s thrall:

Vice President Kamala Harris says former President Trump has the "desire to be a dictator" Tuesday in response to journalist Bob Woodward's book detailing the former president's reported communications with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Harris said during her radio interview with Howard Stern the GOP nominee was easily manipulated "by flattery and with favor" by people like Putin.

"He admires strongmen, and he gets played by them because he thinks that they're his friends," Harris said. "And they are manipulating him full time."

I mean… yeah.

I doubt that this is the October Surprise that will change the election. But it is telling that Woodward also concluded that in this way, Trump was far worse than Richard Nixon. According to the WaPo story, Woodward concluded, “Trump was the most reckless and impulsive president in American history and is demonstrating the very same character as a presidential candidate in 2024.” From someone who generally likes to pick on both parties and maintain a studied position of neutrality, that sentence is damning.