Former President Donald Trump has weird, unhealthy relationships with many world leaders. This is a man who’s admitted to falling in love with North Korean tyrant Kim Jong Un. He approvingly cites the claim by Viktor Orban, Hungary’s quasi-authoritarian leader, that Trump is the “most respected, most feared” leader in the world. He’s regularly criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whom he infamously tried to shake down for dirt on his 2020 presidential rival, Joe Biden.
However, there is no more bizarre or deeply uncomfortable relationship than the one between Trump and Russian strongman Vladimir Putin.
In the latest saga of Donald and Vlad, as revealed in Bob Woodward’s new book, “War,” Trump secretly sent Covid testing kits to Putin. This was happening at the same time that Americans were desperate for Covid testing. Trump’s generosity with Putin stands in sharp and bewildering contrast to his demand during the height of the pandemic that Democratic governors show appropriate deference to him in return for lifesaving supplies. Trump showed more concern for the health of Vladimir Putin, a brutal authoritarian dictator with ample blood on his hands, than he did for Americans.
There is no more bizarre or deeply uncomfortable relationship than the one between Trump and Russian strongman Vladimir Putin.
Woodward also reports that Trump may have spoken to Putin as many as seven times since 2021 — including a call early this year in which Trump reportedly shooed an aide out of the room to speak privately with the Russian president (no other media outlet has confirmed Woodward’s reporting). All this was happening at the same time that Trump pushed congressional Republicans to block renewed military assistance for Ukraine.
What could these two men need to discuss? It’s anyone’s guess, but it seems unlikely that Trump was counseling the Russian president to remove his armies from Ukraine, which Putin invaded in 2022.
Indeed, as Woodward notes, Trump has had nothing but praise for Putin’s decision to invade his Western neighbor. He’s publicly described Putin’s annexation of Ukraine’s easternmost provinces as a “genius” move and called the Russian dictator a “very savvy guy.”
In February 2022, he said of Putin that he is “pretty smart” for having “taken over a country for $2 worth of sanctions, really a vast, vast location, a great piece of land with a lot of people — and just walking right in.”
All of this, of course, follows a pattern that’s been evident since Trump entered public life. He simply can’t quit Vladimir Putin.
Over and over again, he has deferred to the Russian leader. Only a few weeks into his presidency, he brushed away concerns that Putin is a “killer” (which he is) by besmirching the one he ran, “You think our country’s so innocent?”
Trump simply can’t quit Vladimir Putin.
According to a report in The New York Times this week, in July 2017, he met with Putin in Hamburg, Germany, “armed with hawkish talking points drawn up by his advisers.” But instead of raising them, he asked Putin what he thought about sending arms to Ukraine. Putin told him it would be a “mistake” and Trump never pushed back.
In 2018, at an infamous press conference with Putin in Helsinki, Trump said he believed the Russian president when he said that he hadn’t interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election — a view that stood in stark contrast to the consensus view among America’s intelligence agencies.








