Leaked audio: Trump threatened Putin with ‘bombing Moscow’ if Russia, Ukraine went to war
A leaked audio recording captures US President Donald Trump telling a group of donors that the Russia-Ukraine war would have never happened under his presidency because, during his first term, he threatened Russia’s President Vladimir Putin that he would “bomb Moscow” if he went to war against Ukraine.
Trump made these remarks during a series of fundraisers in Florida and New York in 2024 as he made his case for a second term.
The audios were later obtained by Isaac Arnsdorf, Josh Dawsey, and Tyler Pager who detailed some of the exchanges in their new book, “2024.”
“With Putin, I said, ‘If you go into Ukraine, I’m going to bomb Moscow. I’m telling you I have no choice,’” Trump said during one 2024 fundraiser, according to the audio. “And then [Putin] goes, like, ‘I don’t believe you.’ But he believed me 10%,” says Trump in the audio.
Trump also claimed he relayed a similar warning to China’s President Xi Jinping over a potential war with Taiwan, telling him that the US would bomb Beijing in response. “He thought I was crazy,” Trump said of Xi, before noting that “we never had a problem.”
Trump’s comments are nothing new, as he has echoed these claims repeatedly in public, saying that he prevented the wars from starting during his first term and would have done so had he won the 2020 election.
“If I were president, this war would have never happened,” he said last month at the G7 summit in Canada.
Speaking to the Wall Street Journal in October 2024, he said he had warned Putin about war with Ukraine. He claimed he told Putin, “‘I’m going to hit you right in the middle of Moscow.’ I said, ‘We’re friends. I don’t want to do it, but I have no choice. He goes, ‘No way’. I said, ‘Way’.”
However, Trump has grown increasingly frustrated as his efforts to end the Russia-Ukraine War and Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza have stalled.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, left Washington on Tuesday without announcing that a ceasefire in Gaza had been reached.
The audio also shows a more unleashed side of Trump that he was willing to reveal behind closed doors to appeal to wealthy donors as he talked about not only his aggressive foreign policy strategy but also deporting student protesters.
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