Bob Woodward has a new book.
He alleges former President Donald Trump secretly kept in touch
with Russian President Vladimir Putin even after Donald Trump left
office.
The two have spoken as many as seven times since
he left the White House, all while Donald Trump was
pressuring Republicans in Congress to block military aid to Ukraine.
NBC News has not independently confirmed the new details laid
out in that book, but that is what Woodward is
writing.
Joining us now, New York Times chief White House correspondent
and MSNBC political analyst Peter Baker and NBC News correspondent
Vaughn Hilliard.
So, Peter, I'm going to begin with you.
Layout what Woodward says Donald Trump was doing with these
phone calls.
Yeah.
So Woodward, in his new book is called War, and
it's coming out next week, says that a Trump aide
told him that he was outside of the president, former
president's Mar A Lago office earlier this year.
And they've been kicked out of the office because the
former president said he was taking a call with Vladimir
Putin.
And that this aide told Woodward that it was one
of a number of such calls, perhaps as many as
seven.
Now, there aren't any more details about it than that.
And Woodward doesn't cite any other sources.
And we haven't confirmed that separately either.
But obviously, if this is the case, it adds a
new wrinkle to the controversy over President Trump's former President,
Trump's state relationship with President Putin, which has always been
the subject of a great deal of mystery and confusion
and criticism.
Peter, I think my mics on now.
Do we know the time frame for when these calls
were taking place?
I just mentioned it in relation to Donald Trump lobbying
Republicans not to give Ukraine money.
Was it around that same time?
Wood doesn't say.
He says the one call he specifically references took place
in early 2024.
And that's as specific as it gets in the book.
So we don't have any dates for any of the
other calls.
If there were, in fact, other calls, we can't, therefore,
you know, time them to say, aha, this took place
when the House was voting X or Y.
But clearly, you know, it raises questions because Trump has
said repeatedly that Putin is a genius, that he can
solve the war in less than 24 hours, even before
Inauguration Day if he's elected, and essentially has said he
really seem to care too much whether Ukraine wins.
The terms he and his running mate have seemed to
focus on as a possible negotiating basis for a peace
deal would involve Russia keeping all of the land in
Ukraine that it is illegally seized by force and Ukraine
giving up any hopes of joining NATO and declaring it's
neutrality, giving a guarantee, in effect to Russia.
Those are, of course, terms that Putin would certainly like.
Again, we don't know, you know, what took place, if
any, anything in these conversations that might have had taken
place between Trump and Putin.
But it raises new questions.
Yeah.
And there were, you know, the Russian investigation, Vaughn, was
very much about the very many contacts that seemed to
be between Donald Trump's campaign and Russia and Vladimir Putin
and his orbit as well.
There's also a little bit in this book about a
a Covic test.
This is during the height of the pandemic, the beginnings
of the pandemic when Covic tests were in short supply.
What is Woodward alleging, right?
Again, this has to do with Vladimir Putin And while
Donald Trump was still president, Bob Woodward writes that Vladimir
Putin, who did not go and travel abroad for 19
months, was highly concerned about contracting the virus himself.
And in conversations with Donald Trump, the current Republican president
United States went on to his Bob Woodward rights, secretly
sent Putin a bunch of Abbott points of care COVID
test machines for his personal use as the virus spread
rapidly through Russia.
To which he, Putin told Trump, quote, please don't tell
anybody you sent these to me.
Which Trump replied, quote, I don't care, fine.
To which then Putin responded, no, no, I don't want
you to tell anybody because people will get mad at
you, not me.
They don't care about me.
Again, this really goes into detail about the relationship between
these two men.
I did reach out to three Trump campaign officials here
over the last several hours about specifically whether Donald Trump
has had any conversations with Putin since leaving the White
House in 2021.
We have not heard back from the campaign about this.
That's interesting.
You think that if there was no contact, they would
have said this is all untrue.
They've never spoken to each other since Donald Trump left
the White House.
Maybe they still will do that.
Do we know a little bit more about the sourcing
around?
I mean, that's some pretty verbatim dialogue that Woodward is
putting into his book.
Do you have more about the sourcing on that?
Right?
It's a Trump aid.
Is the sourcing of this here?
We don't know who that aid is, but of course,
Donald Trump has kept quite an insular circle around him
ever since heading to Mar a Lago in 2021.
There is a great number of people that left his
side thinking that you did not have a political future
here.
At the same time, we know that Donald Trump has
continued to engage in conversations with other foreign leaders and
other diplomats.
And, you know, of course, there's concern potentially about the
violation of the Logan Act, which is to prevent private
citizens from influencing improperly US foreign policy.
Of course, Michael Flynn was national security adviser to Donald
Trump in February of 2017.
He resigned after it was revealed that he had back
channel conversations with the Russians during the transition here.
So there's a long, deep, complex history.
But we know when Zelensky was meeting with Trump just
a little over a week ago, of course, Donald Trump
was asked about what could this deal potentially look like.
And publicly, he has stayed away from trying to publicly
negotiate the deal.
But it's not clear to what extent privately is Donald
Trump trying to influence this potential situation would matter very
much if he was having conversations with Vladimir Putin while
he was out of office.
Very.
It would matter very much.
Von Hilliard, Peter Baker, gentlemen, thank you very much.