Vice President Kamala Harris lit into her opponent over accusations detailed in a new Bob Woodward book as former President Donald Trump fiercely denies their accuracy.
“I believe that Donald Trump has this desire to be a dictator,” she said during an interview with Howard Stern. “He admires strong men, and he gets played by them because he thinks that they’re his friends. They are manipulating him full time and manipulating him by flattery and with favor.”
Woodward, whose coverage of the Watergate scandal brought down the Nixon administration more than 50 years ago, writes in his new book, War, that Trump has had as many as seven phone calls with Russian President Vladimir Putin since leaving office in early 2021. The book also charges that Trump secretly sent Putin COVID-19 tests during the height of the pandemic.
“People were dying by the hundreds,” Harris said of the COVID-19 tests claim. “Everybody was scrambling to get these kits, the tests, the COVID test kits, couldn’t get them, couldn’t get them anywhere. And this guy who was president of the United States is sending them to Russia to a murderous dictator for his personal use?”
Stern said that he’s voting for Harris and that the election keeps him up at night because he doesn’t understand how it’s close, given Trump’s history and personality.
The Trump team says the stories are “made up” and that they are a form of retaliation for a $50 million lawsuit Trump launched against Woodward last year.
“President Trump gave him absolutely no access for this trash book that either belongs in the bargain bin of the fiction section of a discount bookstore or used as toilet tissue,” Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said. “Woodward is a total sleazebag who has lost it mentally, and he’s slow, lethargic, incompetent, and, overall, a boring person with no personality.”
Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), said that he didn’t know Woodward, 81, was alive until he was asked about the book Tuesday afternoon.
“The guy’s a hack,” Vance said during a rally in Michigan. “So have I talked to Donald Trump about his calls with Vladimir Putin? No, I’ve never had that conversation with Donald Trump in my life.”
Vance added that even if the claims are true, they are not scandalous, pointing to Harris and President Joe Biden’s inability to keep Putin in check since taking office.
“Is there something wrong with speaking to world leaders?” he asked. “No. Is there anything wrong with engaging in diplomacy? Kamala Harris’s approach has been to hide in a basement, hide from the American people, and hide from world leaders. You know what that’s gotten us.”
Nonetheless, the excerpts made a splash in political circles. Reporters repeatedly inquired about the book during a press gaggle aboard Air Force One, asking about it six separate times en route to Wisconsin, where Biden was scheduled to deliver a speech.
“Is it a national security concern?” one reporter asked. “Why are we having … a former president talking to foreign leaders that we’re in pretty tense times with?
Biden administration spokeswoman Emilie Simons did not seem interested in discussing the book, however, repeatedly saying she would let others speak about it.
“President Biden has been crystal clear about his views of Putin as a dictator,” she said. “He’s made that clear repeatedly and whenever asked.”
Simons stressed that it’s important to “secure our relationship with Ukraine and to ensure they have everything they need to continue to fight against Russia’s aggression.”
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Woodward’s book has a few revelations about Biden as well, namely that he used colorful language when describing foreign leaders that he has had trouble with.
Biden reportedly referred to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “that son of a b****” and to Putin as “that f****** Putin” and “the epitome of evil.”
Ramsey Touchberry contributed to this report.