Damning Book Reveals Trump Sent Putin COVID Tests—and Tried to Hide It

During the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and amid a shortage of working Covid tests, Donald Trump secretly sent some tests to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The revelation comes from an upcoming book by journalist Bob Woodward, War, which is scheduled to be released October 15. Putin accepted the tests but worked to keep the gift secret out of concern for backlash against Trump. He told Trump not to reveal that he sent any tests to Moscow, according to Woodward’s book.

“I don’t want you to tell anybody because people will get mad at you, not me,” Putin reportedly told Trump.

The Russian autocrat may have had a point as, at the time, states around the country were having trouble getting supplies to fight the virus, and Trump was treating the virus as more of a public relations concern. Trump told governors in the pandemic’s early months that they would have to buy their own supplies rather than rely on the federal government, saying that the White House was not a “shipping clerk” for vital resources.

At the same time, though, the federal government was outbidding states. For example, Massachusetts’s governor at the time, Charlie Baker, told Trump his state was outbid three times by the federal government for critical supplies. Now Woodward’s reports show that not only was Trump unwilling to procure testing supplies to help state governments, he was secretly sending them to Putin for his personal use.

Putin and Trump have remained in contact even after Trump left the White House, according to Woodward. The two may have spoken as many as seven times since 2021, and in one instance earlier this year, Trump sent an aide away from his office at his Mar-a-Lago estate so he could speak on the phone privately with Putin.

Their close relationship is apparent in what Trump publicly says about Russia and its autocratic leader. The former president said at a press conference last month that Ukraine should surrender to Russia and make things “much better,” basically saying his plan should he return to the White House is to give Putin whatever he wants. To wit, he’s also said he wants to “use sanctions as little as possible” against countries like Russia, Iran, and China.

Woodward is heavily critical of Trump in the book, comparing him unfavorably to Richard Nixon, the president at the center of the Watergate scandal that was exposed five decades ago by Woodward and his Washington Post colleague Carl Bernstein.

“Trump was the most reckless and impulsive president in American history and is demonstrating the very same character as a presidential candidate in 2024,” Woodward writes.

With another hurricane rapidly approaching, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene is taking the opportunity to boost her increasingly unhinged conspiracy theories about the weather.

In a post Monday evening, Greene wrote, “Ask your government if the weather is manipulated or controlled,” re-upping her outlandish ideas that a mysterious “they” can control the climate.

The dangerous post comes after the Georgia representative also revived her antisemitic conspiracy theory about Jewish space lasers over the past week.

As MTG doubles down on her conspiracy theories, Jewish lawmakers have been targeted over the insane dog whistle.

Perhaps Greene is trying to distract from her horrible hurricane response last week, when she was missing in action, catching a football game with Donald Trump as Hurricane Helene pummeled her state.

Rapidly intensifying storms are a result of climate change, but as Hurricane Milton picks up speed, Greene is not offering her constituents anything besides her conspiracies that “climate change is the new Covid,” meaning, to her, it’s made up and controlled by the government.

Making natural disasters a cultural war issue is incredibly dangerous. On Monday, Joe Biden’s press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre pushed back against right-wing misinformation coming from Fox News about the hurricane response. Similarly, over the weekend, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper called for “politicians, billionaires and grifters who peddle lies during a time of crisis” to be held accountable. “Spreading false information to sow chaos hurts real people.”

It’s clear that Greene’s hurricane response is all hot air.

Nobody knows how to take advantage of a spectacle quite like Donald Trump.

On October 7, the Republican presidential nominee opted to honor the one-year anniversary of the war between Israel and Palestine by unceremoniously snapping smiling photos next to images of hostages and dancing to one of his favorite rally tracks.

During his speech, Trump suggested that the people killed in the conflict—which has so far claimed nearly 42,000 Palestinian lives as well as 1,200 Israelis, the majority of whom died during the initial Hamas attack—would be able to say they sacrificed their lives for “something very special.” He then oddly danced across the stage.

“We will have achieved the dream of some generations,” Trump said. “We are going to make this. We are going to turn this. And you can never say a total positive because all of those people that have died, but we’re going to turn this into something where they can be proud of what’s happened. They can say, ‘We sacrificed our lives for something very special.’”

Trump then walked off stage while double punching his fists into the air to “Y.M.C.A.” by the Village People—one of dozens of music groups who have sued the former president for the unauthorized use of their music.

It was, all in all, a busy day full of questionable media appearances for the former president.

Speaking earlier with New York radio show Sid & Friends, Trump claimed that “nobody’s done more for the Jewish people than I have.” And in an interview with Hugh Hewitt, Trump insisted that the state of Israel—not necessarily Jewish Americans—needed to “get smart” about supporting his candidacy while speculating about the potential “waterfront property” real estate development possibilities in Gaza.

“I think that Israel has to do one thing,” Trump said. “They have to get smart about Trump, because they don’t back me. I did more for Israel than anybody. I did more for the Jewish people than anybody. And it’s not reciprocal.”

CBS’s 60 Minutes brutally roasted Donald Trump over his baseless excuses for not appearing on the show.

The Monday episode, which included an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, began with an explanation from host Scott Pelley about exactly why viewers wouldn’t be hearing from the Republican presidential nominee for the first time in more than 50 years.

“It’s been a tradition for more than half a century that the major party candidates for president sit down with 60 Minutes in October. In 1968 it was Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey. This year Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump accepted our invitation, but unfortunately last week, Trump canceled,” Pelley said.

Pelley explained that the Trump campaign had requested that the 60 Minutes team meet the former president for a sit-down interview in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, as well as a meeting in Butler, Pennsylvania, to which they had agreed.

But on September 9, they received word from Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung that the campaign was still working on the logistics for interviewers to come to Butler. Days later, Cheung called to say the president had confirmed the plan.

“Then, a week ago, Trump backed out,” Pelley said.

“The campaign offered shifting explanations,” Pelley explained. “First it complained that we would fact-check the interview. We fact-check every story.”

“Later, Trump said he needed an apology for his interview in 2020. Trump claims correspondent Lesley Stahl said in that interview that Hunter Biden’s controversial laptop came from Russia,” Pelley said. “She never said that.”

“Trump has said his opponent doesn’t do interviews because she can’t handle them. He had previously declined another debate with Harris, so tonight may have been the largest audience for the candidates between now and Election Day.”

Pelley noted that “both campaigns understood this special would go ahead if either candidate backed out,” before transitioning into the interview.

During a rambling speech on Sunday, Trump claimed he’d ended the 2020 interview after Stahl incorrectly fact-checked him about Hunter Biden’s laptop. In reality, he had thrown a fit about how inappropriate it was to be asked “tough questions” before storming off.

“Ah, it’s terrible. So we’re waiting for an apology, they want to do it again,” Trump said Sunday.

“I’ll do it again, but they gotta apol—don’t you think I should make them apologize?”

In the latest 60 Minutes episode, Pelley demonstrates the power of a good fact-check. Trump’s words, and those of his campaign, don’t match up to reality—exposing his unwillingness to face it.

In a post on Truth Social Tuesday morning, Trump ranted about Harris’s interview. “The Interview on 60 Minutes with Comrade Kamala Harris is considered by many of those who reviewed it, the WORST Interview they have ever seen,” Trump wrote, before incoherently rambling about the negative “reviews” of the federal response to Hurricane Helene.

Elon Musk joined Tucker Carlson for an interview Monday night, and laughed about what he believes is a lack of assassination attempts against Kamala Harris and Joe Biden.

The tech CEO deleted an X post in mid-September after the second attempt on Donald Trump’s life, where he joked that “no one is trying to assassinate” Biden or Harris. Now he’s making it clear that he didn’t regret his words.

“Nobody has even bothered to kill Kamala because it’s pointless,” Musk said, as he and Carlson laughed. “What do you achieve? Nothing, you just bought another puppet.”

“It’s deep and true, though,” Carlson said, before Musk replied, “Nobody’s tried to kill Joe Biden. It’d be pointless.”

Last month, Musk’s comments drew the attention of the Secret Service, who announced that they were aware of the post and were looking into it. After deleting the post, Musk took to X to try and explain away his comments.

“Well, one lesson I’ve learned is that just because I say something to a group and they laugh doesn’t mean it’s going to be all that hilarious as a post on X,” Musk posted at the time. “Turns out that jokes are WAY less funny if people don’t know the context and the delivery is plain text.”

This time around, Musk seems to have found a receptive audience in Carlson, although the comment still isn’t funny. It seems to be a product of his embrace of the right, like the A.I. photo he posted of Harris dressed in a red uniform with the insignia of the Soviet Union. He’s made a habit of posting misinformation about the vice president too. Musk should be more careful about what he posts, because one of his sycophants or fans might get the wrong idea.

It looks like antisemites are really latching on to Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s conspiracy theory about Hurricane Helene.

In the aftermath of the Category 4 storm, Jewish government officials have been targeted by antisemitic conspiracy theories, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Asheville Mayor Esther Manheimer, and FEMA spokesperson Jaclyn Rothenberg have become targets of antisemitic abuse online, only days after Greene boosted an antisemitic smear of her own.

Last week, Greene amplified a right-wing conspiracy theory that the government may have manufactured the deadly hurricane.

“Yes they can control the weather,” Greene wrote on X Thursday. “It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.” She also seemed to imply that the government had been targeting Republican areas, which Donald Trump has also suggested.

Not only is this theory outrageously anti-science, but it is also built on an explicitly antisemitic trope. Notably, Greene’s outlandish suggestion also lacks any semblance of reason. While telling her credulous public that Democrats could rule the heavens and summon a deluge upon them, Greene failed to address why Democrats didn’t use that omnipotence to, let’s say, win in Georgia by more than 12,000 votes in 2020—a markedly more pedestrian task, surely.

Greene has not taken down the post, nor apologized for spreading misinformation.

Now criticism over the federal response to Hurricane Helene has been infused with the very same invective, as trolls place the blame for human suffering on the religious and ethnic identities of Jewish leaders.

In a Facebook post on Thursday, Republican North Carolina State Senator Kevin Corbin pleaded with his constituents to stop spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories, including one that the “government is controlling the weather from Antarctica.”

Any future administration under Donald Trump will place a premium on one attribute in executive branch staffers over all others: total allegiance to the MAGA leader.

In an interview with the Financial Times published Monday, Trump transition team co-chair Howard Lutnick explained that incoming staffers would be given their positions based on their devotion to Trump’s vision for America—and to Trump himself.

While explaining how Trump’s last administration buckled under the weight of staff turnover due to disagreements in “vision,” Lutnick said that the new plan is to eradicate any internal hostility to the Republican’s plans.

“They’re all going to be on the same side, and they’re all going to understand the policies, and we’re going to give people the role based on their capacity—and their fidelity and loyalty to the policy, as well as to the man,” the Wall Street billionaire told the publication.

Lutnick joined Trump’s transition team in August, alongside former Small Business Administration head Linda McMahon.

In the same interview, Lutnick attempted to outright dismiss the influence of Project 2025 on Trump’s plans for government.

“Project 2025 is an absolute zero for the Trump-Vance transition,” Luntick told the Financial Times. “You can use another term—radioactive.”

But that total repudiation of the wildly unpopular, 920-page Christian Nationalist manifesto hasn’t been so clear from Trump’s platform. Trump’s proposal to dismantle the Department of Education wholesale is nearly identical to Project 2025, while other Project 2025 policy points aren’t terribly far removed from what Trump has claimed is his legitimate platform, Agenda 47.

Project 2025 has proposed revisiting federal approval of the abortion pill, banning pornography nationwide, placing the Justice Department under the control of the president, slashing federal funds for climate change research in an effort to sideline mitigation efforts, and increasing funding for the U.S.-Mexico border wall.

The longest tenured meteorologist in south Florida is sounding the alarm on Hurricane Milton, warning of the storm’s strength as it hits Category 5 status.

John Morales had trouble keeping his composure on Miami’s NBC 6 Monday morning, pointing out that the hurricane had maximum sustained winds of 160 miles per hour, and climate change is the reason for the stronger hurricane.

“It is just gaining strength in the Gulf of Mexico, where you can imagine, the seas are just so incredibly, incredibly hot, a record hot, as you might imagine,” Morales said. “You know what’s driving that, I don’t need to tell you: Global warming, climate change leading to this and becoming an increasing threat for the Yucatan, including Merida, and Progreso, and other areas there.”

Morales has seen many natural disasters in his nearly three decades of experience, but his voice was shaking as he was describing how the hurricane would affect viewers in south Florida. 

“Even though it is expected to weaken on approach, it is so incredibly strong right now that you’re going to find it very difficult for it to be nothing less than a major hurricane when it makes landfall in Florida,” Morales said.

Later, on X, Morales explained how “extreme weather driven by global warming has changed me. Frankly, YOU should be shaken too, and demand #ClimateActionNow,” and linked back to an article he wrote for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists on how such hurricanes aren’t outliers anymore.

The center of Hurricane Milton is expected to make landfall on Wednesday in the Tampa Bay region, which hasn’t witnessed a storm of its nature in at least a century. Climate change is going to make these kinds of storms stronger, with no regard to which countries and communities get hit. It’s good to see a meteorologist taking the risk seriously and refusing to sugarcoat what causes extreme storms, but unfortunately, politicians have not been as forthright.  While Donald Trump proudly plans to dismantle critical hurricane infrastructure, Kamala Harris and the rest of the Democrats have not boldly made a case for climate action. Maybe they should look to Morales for inspiration.

Senator Marco Rubio posted on X Monday to warn users of the severity of Hurricane Milton, an explosively intensifying Category 5 storm that is expected to make landfall in Florida in the coming days.

“Several years ago I asked @NHC_Atlantic to show me what the worst case storm hitting Florida would look like,” Rubio wrote, tagging the National Hurricane Center. “What they showed me back then is almost identical to the #Milton forecast now.”

Rubio included an image of a map, showing the forecasted storm surge from Hurricane Milton across Florida’s western coast.

While Rubio’s post functioned as explicit evidence of worsening extreme weather, as journalist Aaron Rupar pointed out, the senator has been extremely dismissive of climate change in the past.

In 2022, Rubio wrote a snide post on X (then Twitter) about the Inflation Reduction Act, deriding it as a “climate change bill.”

“While working Americans are struggling with high prices, worried about the border and terrorized by crime the Senate is spending all night voting on a democrat climate change bill,” Rubio wrote.

Through the Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden administration was able to provide more than $1 billion to help communities become more resilient to extreme weather, according to the White House. Rubio voted against the measure.

Rubio spent years downplaying the causes and effects of climate change, before eventually being forced to acknowledge its increasing effects along Florida’s coastline. Still, in a 2019 op-ed, Rubio wrote that pouring money into “reactionary” climate legislation would only hurt the U.S.

“Plans stemming from panic will constrain our economy and cripple our ability to invest future resources in solving longer-term issues,” Rubio wrote. “They would also neutralize our tenuous economic advantage over China, which is doing barely anything to reduce its emissions.”

The Inflation Reduction Act wasn’t the first time Rubio neglected to support legislation that would protect his constituents from the effects of worsening storms and natural disasters. In 2021, Rubio voted against the bipartisan infrastructure bill that put $47 billion toward preparing communities for extreme fires, floods, and weather.

Elon Musk and his super PAC, America PAC, have taken over the @America handle on X to promote their mission to elect Donald Trump.

Musk appeared to acquire the handle over the weekend as he spoke on stage with Trump at his Butler, Pennsylvania, rally. “Read @America to understand why I’m supporting Trump for President,” read Musk’s new bio that Saturday.

Following the acquisition, the pro-Trump super PAC made a big announcement: They’ll be paying for personal information of swing-state voters.

The American PAC is offering the public a $47 referral fee for each registered swing-state voter who signs an online petition in support of the First and Second Amendments. The petition requires signers to submit their personal contact information in the process. Presumably, they will be targeted by the PAC in its quest to elect Trump.

While it is a federal crime to pay someone to vote or to register to vote, Musk’s group is skirting the law given that it’s not illegal to pay voters to sign a petition (or to pay the third party referrers in this case). But earlier this year, the super PAC was under fire by multiple states for election interference for a different data-collection scheme.

Musk’s PAC says its goal “is to get 1 million registered voters in swing states to sign in support of the Constitution, especially freedom of speech and the right to bear arms,” which means Musk may have to pay up to $47 million to Trump supporters.

X users were annoyed but not surprised over the billionaire’s recent moves.

As of Monday, it’s unclear how the PAC will deliver the cash.