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.<\/p>\n
Putin, petrified of the virus, accepted the supplies but took pains to prevent political fallout \u2014 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.<\/p>\n
Putin, according to the book, told Trump, \u201cI don\u2019t want you to tell anybody because people will get mad at you, not me.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019s account.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
These interactions between Trump and the authoritarian leader of a country at war with an American ally form the basis of Woodward\u2019s conclusion that Trump is worse than Richard M. Nixon, whose presidency was undone by the Watergate scandal exposed a half-century ago by Woodward and his Washington Post colleague Carl Bernstein.<\/p>\n
\u201cTrump was the most reckless and impulsive president in American history and is demonstrating the very same character as a presidential candidate in 2024,\u201d Woodward writes in the book, \u201cWar,\u201d which is set to be released Oct. 15.<\/p>\n
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said, \u201cNone of these made-up stories by Bob Woodward are true,\u2019 issuing a string of personal attacks on the author and saying Trump didn\u2019t give him an interview for the book. Cheung argued that the book \u201ceither belongs in the bargain bin of the fiction section of a discount bookstore or used as toilet tissue.\u201d<\/p>\n
With publication on the eve of the presidential election, Woodward, who has chronicled the successes and failures of U.S. presidents for 50 years, concludes that Trump is unfit for office while President Joe Biden and his team, mistakes notwithstanding, exhibited \u201csteady and purposeful leadership.\u201d Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, makes several appearances in the narrative, with Woodward presenting her as a shrewd and loyal No. 2 to Biden but not an influential voice in his administration\u2019s foreign policy.<\/p>\n
The book is Woodward\u2019s fourth since Trump\u2019s upset victory in 2016. It focuses principally on the twin wars consuming Biden\u2019s national security team \u2014 Russia\u2019s all-out war in Ukraine, which began in February 2022, and Israel\u2019s campaign against Hamas and other Iranian-backed proxies since the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023.<\/p>\n
The book also examines the long shadow cast by Trump over the foreign conflicts of the past four years, and over the bitter U.S. political environment in which they have unfolded. And it includes candid assessments by Biden of his own missteps, including his decision to make Merrick Garland attorney general. Reacting to the prosecution of his son Hunter \u2014 by a special prosecutor named by Garland amid partisan recriminations over the Justice Department\u2019s prosecution of Trump \u2014 the president told an associate, \u201cShould never have picked Garland.\u201d<\/p>\n
Woodward reveals how Biden weighed his fate before exiting the presidential race in July, including over lunch earlier that month with Antony Blinken, his secretary of state. Blinken, reports Woodward, warned Biden in the private dining room off the Oval Office that everyone\u2019s legacy is reduced to a single sentence \u2014 and that, if he continued to campaign and lost to Trump, that would be his legacy.<\/p>\n
Still, Blinken believed at the end of the meal that the president was leaning toward staying in the race, underscoring how unpredictable Biden\u2019s decision-making remained until the final moment.<\/p>\n
\u201cWar\u201d illuminates the frantic, and often failed, effort by Biden\u2019s team to prevent escalation of fighting in the Middle East \u2014 fighting that the president came to see as inseparable from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s political fortunes, and from political dynamics in the United States, too.<\/p>\n
According to Woodward, one of Trump\u2019s national security advisers, Keith Kellogg, secretly met with Netanyahu during a trip to Israel earlier this year. Upon his return, Kellogg publicly circulated a memo effectively blaming Biden for the Hamas-led attack on Israel, writing, \u201cThis visit reinforced that the Biden Administration\u2019s erosion of U.S. deterrence globally and its failed policies vis-\u00e0-vis Iran have opened America up to a regional war in the Middle East with devastating consequences for our ally Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the time, Biden advisers were pushing Israel\u2019s leaders to agree to a cease-fire deal as part of an effort to head off an invasion of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. Their entreaties were futile; the Rafah offensive began in May. No one felt the limits of the administration\u2019s ability to restrain Israel more acutely than Blinken. \u201cIt was obvious Blinken had no influence,\u201d Woodward writes.<\/p>\n
On Ukraine, too, Trump\u2019s influence was pronounced, even from his home at Mar-a-Lago. The former president\u2019s resistance to funding Kyiv\u2019s war effort created a blockade on GOP support in the House. This past spring, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) was able to persuade Trump to soften his stance, according to Woodward, not by showing him that Ukraine\u2019s cause was just, but by convincing him that the aid package would help the Republican conference\u2019s electoral chances and thus benefit him personally in the run-up to the November election.<\/p>\n
\u201cWar\u201d offers several snapshots of Harris, always in a supporting role to Biden and hardly determining foreign policy herself.<\/p>\n
The book recounts how Harris sought to spur French President Emmanuel Macron into action in the fall of 2021, in preparation for what the U.S. intelligence community indicated would be a significant Russian military action against Ukraine. So, too, the vice president made her case to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the Munich Security Conference in February 2022, going so far as to press him to develop a succession plan ensuring stability \u201cif you\u2019re captured or killed,\u201d as she put it. And the book reveals how her forceful public tone following a meeting in July with Netanyahu \u2014 pledging that she would \u201cnot be silent\u201d about Palestinian suffering \u2014 contrasted with her more amicable approach in private. The difference, according to Woodward, infuriated Netanyahu, who was taken aback by her public remarks.<\/p>\n
From the Israeli viewpoint, however, Harris had little responsibility for the administration\u2019s approach to the conflict.<\/p>\n
\u201cUntil now, I didn\u2019t feel that Vice President Harris had any impact on our issues,\u201d Michael Herzog, the Israeli ambassador in Washington, is quoted as saying about the period before Harris replaced Biden on the ticket. \u201cShe was in the room, but she never had an impact.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for Trump\u2019s own decision-making process on foreign affairs when he was commander in chief, the book shows how he took in a wide range of viewpoints, including from people without relevant expertise. During a high-level meeting about Afghanistan held at one point in the Situation Room, Trump went around the table to ask everyone\u2019s opinion.<\/p>\n
\u201cMr. President, I\u2019m the notetaker,\u201d one person deflected.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, no,\u201d Trump replied, \u201cif you\u2019re in this room, you\u2019re talking.\u201d The notetaker briefly shared her views.<\/p>\n
\u201cWar\u201d presents the withdrawal from Afghanistan, in the summer of 2021, as a wound for the Biden administration that would shape its response to other international flash points. The debacle, in which U.S. intelligence failed to foresee how quickly the Taliban would seize power, elicited sympathy from the architect of the initial 2001 invasion, George W. Bush, who told Biden, according to the book: \u201cOh boy, I can understand what you\u2019re going through. I got [expletive] by my intel people, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
Woodward contrasts the intelligence failure in Afghanistan to the remarkable insight gained by American spies into Russian plans ahead of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. U.S. capabilities, Woodward reports, included a human source inside the Kremlin.<\/p>\n
The book shows how Biden\u2019s early decisions, which were sometimes in conflict with the judgments of his closest advisers, shaped the course of the war. Foremost was his public vow that Washington would not commit troops to the conflict, which took a key bargaining chip off the table but laid down a marker for the American public wary of new foreign entanglements. Biden, according to Woodward, felt past Russian aggression had been badly mismanaged by his predecessors, including the one he had served, Barack Obama.<\/p>\n
\u201cBarack never took Putin seriously,\u201d Biden told a close friend.<\/p>\n
Biden\u2019s own blunders were costly, the book reveals. In January 2022, he seemed to undercut American resolve by raising the possibility that Russia might seek only a \u201cminor incursion.\u201d His national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, had to do damage control with counterparts in nine NATO countries, in addition to Japan, Woodward reveals.<\/p>\n
Woodward writes that Biden\u2019s most delicate diplomacy, however, involved seeking to foreclose Russia\u2019s nuclear option. In the fall of 2022, that option seemed like a live one, as U.S. intelligence agencies reported that Putin was seriously weighing use of a tactical nuclear weapon \u2014 at one point assessing the likelihood at 50 percent. An especially frantic quest to bring Moscow back from the brink came in October of that year, when Russia appeared to be laying the groundwork for escalation by accusing Ukraine of preparing to detonate a dirty bomb.<\/p>\n
Biden\u2019s team confronted similar hair-raising moments with the Israelis, Woodward reports, foreshadowing Netanyahu\u2019s recent campaign against Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based militant group and Iranian proxy, in an explicit rejection of U.S. calls for a cease-fire. In a parallel of unsubstantiated Russian claims of Ukraine\u2019s intention to use a dirty bomb, the Israelis seemed poised, in the days after Oct. 7, 2023, to launch a preemptive strike against Hezbollah based on what American experts deemed \u201cphantom\u201d warnings of Hezbollah mobilization along Israel\u2019s northern border.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Israelis always do this,\u201d was the reaction of Brett McGurk, Biden\u2019s Middle East coordinator, according to the book. \u201cThey claim \u2018We got the intel! You\u2019ll see it. You\u2019ll see it.\u2019 But like 50 percent of the time the so-called intel doesn\u2019t actually show up.\u201d Apparent drones reported by the Israelis turned out to be birds.<\/p>\n
Yet the book also shows how the Biden administration did little to alter its policy toward Israel even as senior U.S. officials abandoned their belief that the government in Jerusalem was operating in good faith. Already in the days after Oct. 7, Blinken\u2019s impression of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant\u2019s approach was: \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter how many people die. I have a mission to eradicate Hamas and it doesn\u2019t matter how many Palestinians die. It doesn\u2019t matter how many Israelis die.\u201d<\/p>\n
Biden, according to Woodward, was cautious about setting limits on Israel\u2019s conduct lest Netanyahu blow past them. In a one-on-one call in April, Netanyahu promised Biden that the Rafah offensive would take only three weeks, a vow the American president never took seriously. \u201cIt\u2019ll take months,\u201d Biden replied.<\/p>\n
To associates, Biden complained that Netanyahu was a liar only interested in his political survival. And he concluded the same of the prime minister\u2019s associates, saying that 18 out of 19 people who work for Netanyahu are \u201cliars.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the same time, support for the Biden administration\u2019s Middle East policy came from unexpected places, the book reveals. Before the Oct. 7 attacks, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a loyal Trump lieutenant and shape-shifter who went from an outspoken critic of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to a trusted interlocutor, had relayed information to Biden about prospects for the normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. Graham believed normalization was best completed under Biden, arguing that congressional Democrats would be reluctant to lend support to a Trump-sponsored initiative. Graham promised he could deliver the Republican votes.<\/p>\n
After Oct. 7, Graham continued to engage with the crown prince. During a March visit by the senator to Riyadh, which is recounted by Woodward, Graham proposed a phone call with Trump, so the crown prince pulled out a burner phone labeled \u201cTRUMP 45.\u201d In earlier meetings, the crown prince had brandished other such devices, including one labeled \u201cJAKE SULLIVAN\u201d for Biden\u2019s national security adviser.<\/p>\n
During the March call with Trump, conducted by the crown prince over speakerphone while Graham was present, the former president teased the senator for once calling for the Saudi royal\u2019s ouster over the assassination of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, which the CIA concluded Mohammed had ordered. Graham brushed it off, professing to have been wrong about the autocrat.<\/p>\n
The royal court in Riyadh, however, is not the comparison Graham uses when describing visits to Trump\u2019s residence at Mar-a-Lago. According to Woodward, the senator invokes an even more brutal form of authoritarianism.<\/p>\n
\u201cGoing to Mar-a-Lago is a little bit like going to North Korea,\u201d the book quotes Graham as saying. \u201cEverybody stands up and claps every time Trump comes in.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":10762,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10761\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}