Donald Trump was asked whether he had been in touch with Russian President Vladimir Putin since leaving the White House in January 2021. After Bob Woodward reported that one source claimed that Trump had spoken on the phone with Putin up to seven times since 2021, the mainstream media has reported the seven meetings as a fact. However, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded last week that Trump had indeed sent Covid-19 tests to Russia, but “about the phone calls—it’s not true.”
Yesterday, at the Economic Club of Chicago, Trump told John Micklethwait: “I don’t comment on that, but I will tell you that if I did, it’s a smart thing. If I’m friendly with people, if I can have a relationship with people, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing, in terms of a country… he’s got 2,000 nuclear weapons and so do we.”