Trump refuses to confirm calls with Putin, says ‘would be a smart thing’ if he spoke: ‘Russia has never had a president’

Former President Donald Trump refused to say whether he's spoken with Russian President Vladimir Putin since leaving office, as reported in journalist Bob Woodward's latest book. But if the two did speak, Trump did say, it would be “a smart thing” for the United States.

During a comprehensive and occasionally heated interview with Bloomberg editor-in-chief John Micklethwait at the Economic Club of Chicago, Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, faced questions about his interactions with the Russian president.

In his book "War," Bob Woodward claimed that Trump did engage in as many as seven private phone conversations with Putin since leaving the White House. The book also alleges that Trump also had discreetly sent COVID-19 testing machines to the Russian president during the peak of the pandemic.

However, Trump campaign's spokesperson had previously denied the report.

During the Tuesday's interview, Micklethwait posed the question to Trump directly: “Can you say yes or no whether you have talked to Vladimir Putin since you stopped being president?”

“I don't comment on that,” Trump responded. He, however, added, “But I will tell you that if I did, it's a smart thing. If I'm friendly with people, if I can have a relationship with people, that's a good thing and not a bad thing in terms of a country.”

Trump furthermore went and said that Putin, who invaded neighbouring Ukraine and who has been accused of war crimes by the International Criminal Court, is well respected in Russia.

“Look, I had a very good relationship with President Xi and a very good relationship with Putin, and a very good relationship with Kim Jong Un," he said during the interview as quoted by Associated Press. Of Putin, he later added, "Russia has never had a president that they respect so much.”

In the book, Woodward reported that early this year, Trump had asked an aide to leave his office at his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, so that the former president could have a private call with Putin. The aide, whom Woodward doesn't name, said there have been multiple calls between Trump and Putin since Trump left office, perhaps as many as seven, according to the book. However, the context and details of their calls is not known.

On this, both Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that the reporting was false.

(With all inputs from Associates Press)