After legendary reporter Bob Woodward revealed in his upcoming book War that former President Donald Trump secretly sent COVID-19 tests to Russian President Vladimir Putin during the pandemic, Vice President Kamala Harris's campaign wasted no time turning it into an ad.
According to the book, Trump sent a secret shipment of testing equipment to Putin during the height of the pandemic in 2020, even as the U.S. and other nations were grappling with severe shortages of testing kits.
“I don’t want you to tell anybody because people will get mad at you, not me. They don't care about me,” Putin told Trump, as stated in the book. Trump replied, "I don't care. Fine," according to Woodward.
In a statement, the Trump campaign rejected the book as consisting of “made up stories” authored by a “deranged man," but Woodward’s reporting contributes to the ongoing questions regarding Trump’s relationship with Putin, which began during his 2016 presidential campaign when he publicly urged Russia to locate Hillary Clinton’s missing emails.
In a post to her followers on X, formerly Twitter, Harris shared a new campaign ad that stresses the following over footage of Trump downplaying the pandemic's severity and images of him shaking hands with and greeting the Russian leader on prior occasions:
"Trump will always choose Putin over the American people and now we have evidence: a new report that he secretly sent Putin COVID tests while witholding them from sick and dying Americans."
"Who will Trump look out for in his second term? It's not you."
You can watch the ad below.
The ad complements Harris's recent appearance on shock jock Howard Stern's program, in which she issued her strongest rebuke against Trump yet regarding his deferential attitude toward Putin and praise for dictators:
"I actually said it during the debate: Donald Trump has this desire to be a dictator. He admires strongmen and he gets played by them because he thinks they are his friends and they are manipulating him full-time and manipulating him with flattery and with favor."
"To your point, as reported by Bob Woodward, in the height of the pandemic—and remember and your listeners will remember—people were dying by the hundreds, everybody was scrambling to get these kits, these test kits [and] they couldn't get them anywhere."
“This guy who was president of the United States is sending them to Russia to a murderous dictator for his own personal use. That is the most recent stark example of who Donald Trump is, that he secretly sent test kits for the personal use of Putin, Russia, an adversary of the United States, when he was talking about how Americans should be putting bleach in their blood."
"This person who wants to be president again who secretly is helping out an adversary when the American people are dying by the hundreds every day and in need of relief. And how did he manage it domestically for Americans? He mismanaged the whole thing."
You can hear what she said in the audio below.
Harris's anger, also reflected in the ad, was palpable—and many were similarly furious.
According to Woodward, Trump may have had as many as seven conversations with Putin since Biden took office. In one reported instance, Trump instructed an aide to leave his office at Mar-a-Lago so he could take a private call with Putin in early 2024.
These exchanges between Trump and Putin led Woodward to conclude that Trump is worse than former President Richard Nixon, whose presidency was derailed by the Watergate scandal that Woodward and his Washington Post colleague Carl Bernstein uncovered nearly fifty years ago.
With the book's release timed just before the presidential election, Woodward, who has documented the achievements and failures of U.S. presidents for five decades, asserts that Trump is unfit for office. He contrasts this with President Joe Biden and his team, who, despite their errors, demonstrated “steady and purposeful leadership.”
Harris also features prominently in the narrative, with Woodward portraying her as a clever and loyal second-in-command to Biden.
