Russia Reacts to Leaked Audio of Trump’s Unhinged Bomb Threat
Trump bragged to donors that he threatened to “bomb the sh*t out of Moscow.”

Last year, President Trump told donors that he had a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin in which he threatened to “bomb the shit out of Moscow” if Putin invaded Ukraine. Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov (mostly) denied that the phone call ever happened.
“It’s hard to say. There were no phone calls at that time,” Peskov said, according to CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. “As far as I understand, we’re talking about a period when Trump was not yet president of the United States.”
According to the recording obtained by CNN’s Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager, and Isaac Arnsdorf, Trump told donors: “With Putin I said, ‘If you go into Ukraine, I’m gonna bomb the shit out of Moscow. I’m telling you I have no choice.’
“So he goes like, ‘I don’t believe you.’ He said, ‘No way,’ and I said, ‘Way,’” Trump continued. “And then he goes like, ‘I don’t believe you,’ but the truth is he believed me 10 percent.”
There are a lot of questions here. It would not be shocking if Trump was lying about all of this just to impress some donors. But if he wasn’t, then why was he on the phone with Putin threatening to bomb Russia before he was even president? And why has he strayed so far away from that gusto now, allowing Putin to continue to bulldoze Ukraine? He was just complaining on Tuesday that the Russian president had thrown “a lot of bullshit” at the United States. Where has the energy of that fundraiser evening gone?
Trump was also heard at this fundraiser threatening to throw pro-Palestinian people out of the country and called working-class Democratic voters “welfare people.”