Trump threatened to bomb Moscow if Putin attacked Ukraine — CNN releases tapes
Photo: Trump allegedly threatened to bomb Moscow, says CNN (Getty Images)
Last year, during a closed-door donor meeting, Donald Trump claimed that he once tried to stop Vladimir Putin from invading Ukraine by threatening to "bomb the sh*t out of Moscow," according to CNN's leaked tapes.
"With Putin I said, 'If you go into Ukraine, I'm going to bomb the sh*t out of Moscow. I'm telling you I have no choice," Trump said at a 2024 fundraising event.
According to the recording, Putin responded that he didn't believe Trump.
“But he believed me 10%,” Trump added.
Trump also claimed to have issued a similar warning to Chinese President Xi Jinping regarding a potential invasion of Taiwan, telling him that the US would bomb Beijing in response.
"He thought I was crazy," Trump said of Xi. "But we never had a problem."
Trump's remarks
These comments were made while Trump was actively campaigning for a second term. The statements were captured at fundraising events in New York and Florida in 2024.
Journalists Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager, and Isaac Arnsdorf later obtained the recordings and detailed some of the conversations in their new book "2024." In May, Dawsey published Trump's threat to Putin in The Washington Post, though the audio had not been released until now.
Trump has repeatedly — and without evidence — claimed that Russia's war on Ukraine would have never started if he had been president.
