President Trump privately crowed to a group of donors last year that the bloody war in Ukraine “never would’ve happened” under his watch because he warned Russian tyrant Vladimir Putin that he would “bomb the s—t out of Moscow,” according to leaked audio.
Trump claimed that he had similarly threatened Chinese leader Xi Jinping that he would bomb Beijing in order to deter him from attacking Taiwan, the audio from a 2024 fundraiser published by CNN reveals.
“With Putin, I said, ‘If you go into Ukraine, I’m going to bomb the s–t out of Moscow. I’m telling you I have no choice,’” the president is heard saying. “And then [Putin] goes, like, ‘I don’t believe you.’ But he believed me 10%.”
“He thought I was crazy,” Trump later recalled of Xi. “We never had a problem.”
The audio was obtained by Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager and Isaac Arnsdorf for their book “2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America,” which hit bookshelves Tuesday.
Trump has repeatedly alluded in public to making a dramatic threat against Putin to deter an invasion of neighboring Ukraine.
“It [Ukraine] was the apple of his eye; he used to talk about it. But I said, ‘You’re not going in,’ and he wasn’t going in,” Trump recounted at a town hall in Pennsylvania last year.
Many attendees at the fundraiser were heard cracking up as Trump recounted the ominous threats he gave to Putin and Xi.
The Post has contacted the White House for comment.
