Kremlin confirms that Trump sent COVID testing equipment to Putin

Presidential candidate and convicted felon Donald Trump has unleashed his poodles to deny Bob Woodward’s allegations in his new book, “War,” that Trump had spoken to Vladimir Putin as many as seven times since leaving office.  Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung issued a flat denial of Woodward’s expose: “None of these made up stories by Bob Woodward are true and are the work of a truly demented and deranged man who suffers from a debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

You will note the absolute nature of Cheung’s denial, that “none” of what Woodward had to say about Trump’s contacts with Putin are true.

That denial was just sent south by no less a source than Kremlin spokesman Dimitri Peskov this afternoon when he confirmed that Trump had indeed sent the COVID testing equipment to Putin soon after it was developed in the early days of the pandemic.  Peskov claimed that “we also sent equipment at the beginning of the pandemic,” implying that Russia had sent ventilators to the U.S. at the time this country was running out of them.  Peskov, however, denied that the phone calls between Trump and Putin took place.  “But about the phone calls—it’s not true,” Peskov told the New York Times today, calling that allegation “a typical bogus story in the context of the pre-election political campaign.”

Let’s begin by getting straight what Trump sent to Putin.  The early COVID tests weren’t the kind of swab-and-check tests that the federal government is once again sending out free to anyone who requests them and that you can buy for about $25 at your local pharmacy.  The early COVID tests were “Abbott Point of Care COVID test machines,” according to Woodward’s book.  The tests consisted of the same kind of cheek swabs and test tubes in use today but included the sophisticated medical machinery then necessary to process the in results order to be able to show whether the sample was positive or negative.  The Abbott machines were developed in the early stages of the pandemic and began being shipped to labs and hospitals in the U.S. on March 27, 2020.  According to a press release from Abbott at the time, “The ID NOW platform is small, lightweight (6.6 pounds) and portable (the size of a small toaster), and uses molecular technology, which is valued by clinicians and the scientific community for its high degree of accuracy.”

This is apparently what Trump sent to Putin “for his personal use,” according to the Woodward book.

So, let’s examine this for a moment.  How would this come about?  Would Trump simply acquire one of the novel tests from the Abbott company and put it in the mail to the Kremlin in Moscow?  Well, Russia was under strict sanctions by 2020, which were imposed under the Obama administration after Moscow invaded and seized the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine.  One of the sanctions was an “embargo on exports to Russia of designated military and dual-use goods.”  It is unknown if medical equipment came under the “dual use” designation, but the mere fact that there were sanctions on Russia at the time Trump sent the Abbott tests to Putin means that the equipment was probably not merely put in the mails.

One of two things had to take place:  Either Putin called Trump and asked for the tests, the existence of which had been announced publicly in March of 2020.  Or Trump called Putin and asked him if he would like a few.  So, it is highly likely that a contact by phone was made at the time.  It’s also probable that the notorious germaphobe Putin, having received the COVID tests for his personal use, would have called to thank Trump.

Remember the photos of Putin that were released by the Kremlin in 2022 around the time of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?  One of them showed Putin at the end of a very long conference table, maybe 20 feet in length, with a clutch of his generals at the other end.  That is how paranoid Putin was about possibly contracting COVID two years after the pandemic began.

So, we can shoot down Cheung’s flat denial of any contacts between Trump and Putin right there.

Of more use in evaluating whether Trump and Putin were in contact with each other after Trump left office are the meetings they had that we know about when Trump was still president.  According to a story in the Washington Post in 2019, two years before Trump would leave office, Trump and Putin had met privately five times.  But there was “no detailed record, even in classified files, of Trump’s face-to-face interactions with the Russian leader at five locations over the past two years.” 

One of the meetings was two hours in length and took place in Helsinki at the gathering of the G7 in 2018. At that meeting, the only other person in the room was Putin’s translator, as Trump had ordered his own translator not to attend. After another meeting, Trump is known to have instructed his translator to destroy the notes she took during the private encounter between Trump and Putin.  After the meeting in Helsinki, Trump told the press he believed Putin’s denials that he had attempted to influence the 2016 election, even though the U.S. intelligence community had issued a report that Putin had done just that.  Special Counsel Robert Mueller would indict 12 Russian nationals working for Russian intelligence for their role in hacking Democratic Party emails and distributing them publicly during the 2016 election.

Since we’re having so much fun shooting down Trump’s denials, let’s go a step further and speculate about what Trump and Putin might have talked about during their seven phone calls between 2021 and this year – a number that works out to about one call every six months.  Given the fact that Trump called Putin a “genius” just days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, do you think Trump might have called him up to congratulate him on his brilliant stroke of military knowhow?  The “genius” comment came before Putin’s failure to take Kyiv quickly, a fact that would become known a couple of weeks later.

Alternatively, or perhaps as well, do you think Putin might have called Trump before he invaded Ukraine to ask him what he thought NATO’s and the U.S. reaction would be?  Trump was famously dismissive of NATO throughout his presidency, at several points even threatening to leave the alliance if European states didn’t “pay their fair share,” seemingly treating NATO as if it were a club to which you paid dues.  Do you think it’s possible that with Trump’s known disdain for NATO that he might have told the Russian leader that the alliance was a paper tiger, and he had little to worry about?  Trump had and has a very low opinion of Joe Biden as president and as a man, calling him “sleepy Joe” during the 2020 campaign and worse things since.  Do you think it’s possible that Trump might have told Putin that he didn’t have to worry about Biden, calling the American president “weak,” another of his frequent charges against Biden?

Let me tell you what I think.  One:  You can’t believe a word out of Trump’s mouth, so when he denies that he talked to Putin, you can pretty much count on the fact that he did.  Two:  He has had a long-time fixation on Putin, calling him a “strong leader” and making other laudatory comments about him, including expressing admiration for how Putin has complete control over the Russian parliament, the Duma.  Three:  Guys like Trump and Putin absolutely revel in the top-of-the-peak-bro-ism of being the leaders of two of the most powerful countries in the world.  I think neither of them could resist calling each other and bragging and comparing notes about their illustriousness.

And most importantly, four:  Beginning on January 20, 2021, Donald Trump had another presidential election in his future.  Nobody knew better how much Putin and Russia aided his campaigns in 2016 and 2020 than Donald Trump.  I think there is zero, nada, none, zip possibility that Trump hasn’t talked to Putin about what the Russians could do for his campaign this year.  We’ve already seen that Russia was involved in paying right-wing podcasters and other influencers up to $10 million for putting disinformation and attacks on Biden on social media.  Two people associated with the Russian media company RT have been indicted in the scheme.  So, we know without a doubt that Russia, very likely under the instruction of Vladimir Putin himself, because nothing important happens in Russia without him being involved, has already attempted to influence the election on Trump’s behalf.

There is no way these two criminals haven’t talked with one another about Ukraine, about the Middle East, about Biden, about NATO, and very probably about Trump’s long-held desire to build a Trump hotel in Moscow.  Does the NSA know what they talked about?  Not if they were using an encrypted app on burner phones, and my bet is that Trump’s package of Abbott COVID tests included…you guessed it…a burner phone or two.