Dear Commons Community,

The new Grand Egyptian Museum will open its main galleries today including 12 halls that exhibit aspects of ancient Egypt, as part of a trial run, officials say. 

It will be the largest archaeological museum complex in the world and will house King Tut’s entire treasure collection.  Located just 2km away from the Giza pyramids (of which it will have a panoramic view), the Grand Egyptian Museum will be home to a collection of some 100,000 objects and artifacts, as well as a 3D cinema and a museum dedicated to children.

The museum was first scheduled to open in 2015, however building works have been fraught with delays and costs have spiraled from an estimated US$500 million to somewhere around the US$1 billion mark.

Hopefully none of those things will matter once the spectacular 500,000 sqm space opens.

The video below (courtesy of AP Video: Ahmed Hatem) provides a preview of what to expect.  It looks magnificent.

Tony

Courtesy of CNN.

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times’ reporter Maggie Haberman yesterday picked apart  Donald Trump’s increasingly rambling answers to questions, which he has repeatedly tried to spin as a speaking tactic called the “weave.”

Haberman told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins that “we are used to seeing him have a discursive speaking style but it has gotten more rambling, it has gotten more incoherent and it’s gotten longer.”

Trump’s speeches “were much shorter when he was in office” but now can stretch to 90 minutes long, Haberman noted. “His aides have been working to try to get them down for a while. But no, I think calling it the ‘weave’ is PR to try to explain why he’s talking this way.”

Haberman, who has reported on Trump for years and drawn his fury on multiple occasions, elsewhere during the discussion suggested Trump sometimes now seems “like he’s devoid of context” and “like he’s just sort of showing up and behaving in various ways.”

She put it partly down to Trump’s age.

Trump turned 78 in June and in July became the oldest ever presidential nominee after President Joe Biden abandoned his reelection campaign and endorsed his vice president, now-Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.

“I think he’s older,” Haberman said of Trump. “I think there’s less of a filter than there used to be which is what happens when people get older.”

Sources close to Trump also say he’s “seemed somewhat different” since the attempt on his life in July and Biden’s decision to drop out of the race, Haberman added.

See the exchange with Kaitlin Collins below.  The discussion of the weave takes place at about the 3:20 mark.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

I have just finished reading a new book by Rachel Kousser entitled, Alexander at the End of the World:  The Forgotten Final Years of Alexander the Great. Kousser is a professor of ancient history at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center.

Anyone interested in ancient Middle Eastern history will find this book filled with interesting stories and background on Alexander’s quest to conquer the known world in the 4th century BC.  A good deal of the book is devoted to Alexander’s knowledge of military strategy.  However, it is one of the only books I have ever read which devotes an entire chapter describing the thousands of non-military people who traveled with an army – the philosophers, musicians, women and children. Kousser makes clear the difficult logistics of moving the entire entourage over difficult terrain such as deserts, mountains and flooded rivers.  Kousser also provides provocative insights into Alexander such as the possibility of his complicitness in his father’s (Philip of Macedon) death.  The author also makes clear that Alexander’s admiration of Persian culture was a major source of friction with his Macedonian friends and generals.

In sum, I found this an informative read.  I highly recommend it if you have any interest in Alexander.

Below is a review published in The New York Times.

Tony

——————————————————————————-

The New York Times

Think Our Political Leaders Are Selfish? Imagine Working for Alexander the Great.

 By Justin Marozzi

Justin Marozzi is the author of “Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World” and the editor of “A Thousand Golden Cities: 2,500 Years of Writing From Afghanistan and Its People.”

July 14, 2024

ALEXANDER AT THE END OF THE WORLD: The Forgotten Final Years of Alexander the Great, by Rachel Kousser

It is difficult to reach the end of the world when you don’t know where it is. That was the recurrent, ultimately insurmountable, challenge faced by the empire-building Macedonian king Alexander the Great during the last seven years of his life, a tumultuous period now under review in “Alexander at the End of the World,” by the classicist Rachel Kousser.

Her story begins in 330 B.C. just before the assassination of the Persian king Darius III, whom Alexander defeated at the Battle of Gaugamela the previous year, and concludes with Alexander’s death at Babylon in 323 B.C. Between those dates Alexander led an increasingly cosmopolitan army across much of what was, to Mediterranean people, the known world, rampaging through Iran and into Central Asia, over the Hindu Kush mountains and into the Indian subcontinent, subduing everyone and everything before him and picking up local warriors to fight for him along the way.

Unable to stand still, the 32-year-old conqueror was on the cusp of invading Arabia when death intervened. It was this final stage of his military career — teeming with brutality, conspiracies, compromises, failures, reversals and near mutinies — that, Kousser argues, made him great.

Her prose is bracing and her descriptive powers rise admirably to the task of portraying the world in which Alexander operated. Fresh from razing the Persian capital of Persepolis in 330 B.C., the Macedonian led an army of 17,000 toward the city of Ecbatana in northwestern Iran. The beginning of his journey was bucolic, the countryside “blanketed with the bright green leaves and pale blossoms of spring,” a vista of apple, mulberry, pear, quince and pomegranate trees. “On the plains,” she writes, “cattle and horses nibbled tender new grass, while along the rivers, a rich variety of aquatic birds taught their hatchlings to swim and fly.”

Kousser summons new archaeological evidence, some of which is persuasive, to support her argument that Alexander was more of an integrationist than is generally recognized. Cultural assimilation could go both ways, too. South Asian representations of Buddhas and bodhisattvas, to give one example, testify to the widespread emulation of Alexander’s signature hairstyle.

The author’s characterization of the relationship between the king and his men as the campaign wore on — mutual adoration shot through with flashes of bitter recrimination — is especially convincing. Tensions quickly flared as Alexander attempted to meld his newly acquired Persian soldiers (soon to be joined in an ever-expanding army by Scythians, Bactrians, Sogdians and Indians) to his Macedonian military core. The Macedonians resented their king’s quick-fire embrace of Persian dress, customs and a wife, Roxane, along with his appointment of Persians to senior political and military commands.

Cultural fluidity aside, one sympathizes with Alexander’s mostly loyal, long-suffering and battle-weary Macedonian warriors. Alexander was a difficult, often reckless leader who at times needed saving from himself. On a hunt in 328 B.C., their glory-seeking king insisted on killing a lion single-handed. After he had shoved aside his bodyguard and killed the beast with a single throw of his spear, the Macedonians decreed that he was no longer allowed to hunt on foot and must always be accompanied by officers. Fat chance. “They were trying to bottle lightning,” Kousser writes.

At the heart of this book lies the defining question asked both by Alexander’s soldiers and by generations of historians ever since: Why did he keep campaigning so relentlessly, ever farther east? Why, for instance, did he seek to conquer India in 327 B.C.?

In seeking to answer this, Kousser faces the same difficulties encountered by Alexander’s earliest biographers, none of whose works survive in their entirety. In the fullest account, left by the Greek historian Arrian half a millennium after Alexander’s death, the Indian campaign was fueled by the king’s pothos (Greek for “a strong desire”) to have what he did not possess. He may have been equally driven by the fabulous riches India offered, as well as by simple curiosity. Heading south through the Indus Valley from pacified Afghanistan might also have appeared a sensible way to reach the elusive, encircling “Ocean,” which Aristotle, Alexander’s childhood tutor, considered to be the end of the world — the natural limit for conquests, mortal or divine.

In the final analysis, conquerors need to conquer and Alexander’s appetite, as Kousser makes clear, was insatiable. In Arrian’s words, “it seemed to him that there was no end to the war while an enemy remained” — a forerunner, perhaps, of the 21st-century, U.S.-led war on terror, once called the “Forever War.”

The costs of this obsession became clearer after his death. Had Alexander spent more time administering his empire, and less on its never-ending expansion, it might have been set on firmer foundations and not disintegrated almost immediately. Kousser does not press the comparison, but both the Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan and his Turkic successor Timur, better known in the West as Tamerlane, emulated Alexander’s epic feats of arms, but added longer-lasting imperial legacies to their astonishing achievements.

Dear Commons Community,

Vice President Kamala Harris has agreed to a sit-down interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier, the network announced yesterday.

The interview will be taped in Pennsylvania and is expected to consist of 25 to 30 minutes of questions. It’s scheduled to air on Oct. 16 (tomorrow) at 6 p.m. EST, on Baier’s show, “Special Report with Bret Baier.”

Baier serves as the network’s chief political anchor.

Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, won’t be the first on the ticket to enter hostile territory. Her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz (D-Minn.), has appeared on “Fox News Sunday” the past two weekends.

Harris’ media appearances have ticked sharply upward in recent weeks, with interviews on “60 Minutes,” “The View,” and “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” She also sat for a live interview on “The Howard Stern Show” and appeared on “Call Her Daddy,” a popular podcast.

Meanwhile, Harris’ Republican rival, former President Donald Trump, backed out of a scheduled interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” he’d agreed to. In a furious rant, he then demanded the century-old network be pulled off the air.

David Plouffe, a senior adviser to Harris, said Trump flaked on the CBS interview because he’s “afraid” of lots of things.

“Afraid of the debate stage,” Plouffe tweeted on Oct. 1, referencing Trump’s unwillingness to debate Harris a second time after they faced off in September. “Afraid of 60 minutes. And his campaign team ― after the last three days of increasingly unhinged and unstable ranting at his rallies ― is clearly afraid of exposing him beyond comfortable confines.”

Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung called the story “fake news,” and disputed that Trump had ever agreed to a “60 Minutes” interview beyond “initial discussions.”

I would have preferred if Kamala Harris was being interviewed by Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto. He is far more “fair and balanced” than Baier.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Speaking in Warren, Michigan last week, Tim Walz accused Trump of allowing U.S. manufacturing jobs to be outsourced during his presidency, saying he’d been “asleep at the wheel.”

“He awarded $425 billion in federal contracts to companies that offshored federal jobs,” Walz said.

“Trump’s all talk when it comes to being tough on China,” he went on. “We just found out his Trump-branded Bibles — are printed in China. This dude even outsourced God to China.”

It was a reference to the recent controversy over a version of the Bible endorsed by Trump that has also been hawked to Oklahoma public schools.

“I’m going to try to be generous here,” Walz added. “I don’t blame him. He didn’t notice the ‘Made in China’ sticker because they put it inside, a place he’s never looked, in the Bible.”

Ouch!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times columnist, Maureen Dowd, had a piece yesterday urging Kamala Harris to be more assertive in the final three weeks of the presidential campaign. Entitled, “Where Is the Fierce Urgency of Beating Trump?” Dowd reminds us that Hillary Clinton became complacent in the 2016 election and took for granted states like Wisconsin and Michigan.  Dowd also cites Democrat pundit, James Carville, who is quoted as saying:

“Time is short, really short. They (Harris campaign) need to be more aggressive. They don’t strike me as having any kind of a killer instinct. They let one fat pitch after another go by. I’m scared to death. They have to hit hard — pronto.”

I agree with Dowd and Carville.  Harris and her handlers have been too nice with the bully, Trump.  He needs a few slaps in the nose.

Below is the entire column.

Tony

The New York Times

“Where Is the Fierce Urgency of Beating Trump?”

Oct. 12, 2024

By Maureen Dowd

Opinion Columnist, reporting from Washington

Barack Obama got blunt in Pittsburgh on Thursday. He chided Black men who are not supporting Kamala Harris, saying that some of “the brothers” were just not “feeling the idea of having a woman as president.”

That left me mulling again: Is Harris in a dead-even race against a ridiculous person because of her sex or is that just an excuse?

Hillary Clinton did not lose because she was a woman. She lost because she was Hillary Clinton. She didn’t campaign hard enough, skipping Wisconsin and barely visiting Michigan. She got discombobulated about gender and whinged about sexism.

I asked James Carville if Kamala’s problem is that too many Americans are still chary about voting for a woman, much less a woman of color. The Ragin’ Cajun chided me.

“We’re not going to change her gender or her ethnic background between now and Election Day, so let’s not worry about it,” he said. “Time is short, really short. They need to be more aggressive. They don’t strike me as having any kind of a killer instinct. They let one fat pitch after another go by. I’m scared to death. They have to hit hard — pronto.”

Her campaign, he said dryly, “is still in Wilmington.”

Kamala spent a week answering questions on “60 Minutes” and “The View” and on the shows of Stephen Colbert and Howard Stern. And she didn’t move the needle.

“She needs to stop answering questions and start asking questions,” Carville said. He thinks that, for her closing message, she should put the issue of Jan. 6 and who won the election on the back burner.

Instead, he said, she should ask:

“How dare JD Vance say with a straight face that Trump is the father of Obamacare when Trump tried to kill it 50 times?”

She should display pictures of right-wing judges who Trump could appoint to the Supreme Court, and ask if Americans are ready for an even more fanatical court.

She should ask: “Do you know how destructive tariffs can be? They will kill your freaking jobs.”

She should say she’s going to end the Trump tax cuts for the rich and ask voters if they would rather use those trillion-plus dollars to help young people afford their first home.

In other words, he said: “She should scare the crap out of voters. You know, Trump is just taunting us, having a rally at Madison Square Garden just like the Nazis did in 1939.

“Black men and young Black men have to think about what they have at stake in the election. Donald Trump tells you that you have nothing to lose. Well, you have health insurance you could lose, you have a job you could lose.”

Other Democratic strategists I talked to agreed that Harris needs to let her guard down, cut loose and turn on the afterburners. Mainly, her pitch is that she’s not Donald Trump. And that’s an excellent pitch.

But she needs to make the case for herself more assertively.

It’s hard to understand why she didn’t sit down with a yellow pad or laptop long ago and decide why she wanted to be president, what her top priorities would be and how she would get that stuff done. The Vision Thing. Even when getting softballs from supportive TV hosts, Harris at times seemed unsure of how to answer.

She didn’t learn to tack to the center in bright blue California. When asked on “The View” whether she would have done anything different than Joe Biden, she said “there is not a thing that comes to mind” — a flub if you want to convey change.

Harris should distance herself from Biden when she needs to; she should just admit what we all know, that the border policy was bollixed up and that Biden was not tough enough with the execrable Bibi.

Kamala’s guarded nature leaves people feeling that she’s not fully revealing herself. Her reluctance to do serious interviews made her look fearful. She should have been interacting more with the media as a way of getting off the teleprompter and giving a sense of who she is as a person.

She does her homework but her delivery seems more scripted than from the kishkes. Even though it can get weird and duplicitous, Trump is better at riffing.

As Harris grinds it out, trying to woo white women who are ambivalent about Trump, she does have one big advantage: Abortion rights are on the ballot and, as a woman, she can conjure the medieval nightmare that Trump and Vance threaten.

When Harris linked her story about caring for her mother, dying of colon cancer, to her plan to get Medicare to cover some in-home care, she effectively offered a specific policy idea while revealing her vision for a kinder America than Trump has in mind.

His lies about the federal response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton have consequences. When Trump says the government is not helping people in red locales, those affected might not apply for aid. Perhaps Trump’s most ludicrous whopper is that he would be the Protector of Women.

It’s disturbing that Harris can’t get over the hump and outpace Trump. As Carville says, we need less mulling and more action in a do-or-die moment. She needs to do so we don’t die.

Dear Commons Community,

Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto slammed Donald Trump for being “wrong” in his attempts to push misinformation and lies about the Biden administration’s response to Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton on Thursday.

“That kind of misinformation gets out there, and whether it’s perpetrated by a politician or someone you think is someone of note and authority, it is wrong and it is bull and it cannot be tolerated,” Cavuto said.

Cavuto, in a live interview with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, declared that there’s a “lot of misinformation” including the false claim that Republicans aren’t going to “get help” from the federal government while Democrats will.

The GOP nominee, in a post to his Truth Social platform just after Hurricane Helene’s devastating impact on the Southeast, baselessly referred to “reports” that the federal government as well as North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) were going “out of their way to not help people in Republican areas.”

“I would imagine that does a huge disservice to people working together and scares the bejesus out of others when they believe it,” Cavuto said.

Buttigieg flagged his concerns over another false claim, pushed by the former president, that those impacted by Hurricane Helene would only be eligible for $750 in relief money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“You know, what if somebody hears that, they believe it and then they don’t apply for more aid that they could absolutely qualify for. So you know, there are real costs and real consequences to that misinformation,” said Buttigieg before praising those on both sides of the aisle who have criticized the claims.

“Donald Trump said that about North Carolina. Republicans not getting help. Democrats getting help. That was Donald Trump,” Cavuto later added.

Cavuto closed the interview by noting that the aid is not “a one-shot, that’s all” situation; its money FEMA provides upfront to survivors of the storms.

“It’s a way for people to get hands on cash they desperately need, not the only money they will ever get or hope to get,” said the anchor.

Cavuto’s criticism arrived on the same day that President Joe Biden called on Trump to “get a life, man” over his hurricane response lies including his FEMA aid claim.

Cavuto is the only honest news reporter left at Fox.

Tony

Courtesy of mediaplus.com

Dear Commons Community,

Former President Donald Trump held a third rally last month in Erie, Pennsylvania, which sits in the northwest corner of a swing state that could decide who wins the White House.

Like the two other times Trump has been to Erie to rev up his supporters, he left without paying the bill.

City officials haven’t yet tallied up what the Trump campaign owes Erie for public safety costs for his most recent rally in September.

But according to a city official, Trump owes the city more than $40,000 for the rallies he held there in 2018 and 2023.

Erie, whose bills were previously reported by the Erie Times-News, isn’t the only city that has hosted Trump rallies and not been paid by the campaign.

Including Erie, four cities and a county confirmed to NBC News that they’re still waiting for the Trump campaign to pay bills often associated with reimbursements for the costs of local law enforcement and other first responder personnel.

The final price tag is more than $750,000 for those five jurisdictions, with some bills dating back eight years.

At the same time, it’s not always clear cut whose legal responsibility it is to foot the bill.

Reached for comment, a Trump campaign official said in a text message that “questions related to local law enforcement and first responder costs should be directed to secret service.”

At least two municipalities seeking reimbursements said they didn’t have formal agreements with the Trump campaign about costs before the events.

Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi told NBC News that it’s the agency, not the campaign, that typically requests local assistance for such campaign activities.

However, the Secret Service “lacks a mechanism to reimburse local governments for their support during protective events,” he said.

Guglielmi added that the agency has “identified this as a critical need” and is working with Congress to make it possible in the future.

Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign declined to comment on how it handles costs for police and fire department personnel, as well as additional security measures provided by local governments.

The five localities that spoke to NBC News have sent their bills to the Trump campaign. One of the largest unpaid bills comes in at more than half a million dollars.

El Paso, Texas, is seeking more than $569,200 in expenses from 2019, according to an invoice provided by city spokesperson Laura Cruz Acosta. The initial bill for more than $470,000 ballooned when the city charged the campaign a late fee for nonpayment.

In 2020, the El Paso City Council hired a law firm to “advocate in the City’s interest in the collection of the outstanding invoices,” Cruz Acosta said. Four years later, the Trump campaign hasn’t paid.

The unpaid bills go back even further for Spokane, Washington, which wants the Trump campaign to pay for costs incurred in a May 2016 visit, before Trump officially became the Republican nominee for president. That bill amounts to more than $65,000, according to an invoice provided by city spokesperson Erin Hut.

Hut said the Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton presidential campaigns also still owe the city money from invoices that were issued in May 2016. The Sanders campaign owes about $33,000, and the Clinton camp owes a little less than $3,000, she said.

Representatives who previously worked with the campaigns didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

In Missoula County, Montana, government officials are seeking almost $13,000 for a Trump rally in 2018, according to an invoice the county provided to NBC News. The bulk of the bill — nearly $12,000 — is for police officers and 911 dispatchers, according to the invoice. County spokesperson Allison Franz confirmed that the county didn’t have an agreement with the campaign about the anticipated costs before the event.

In the crucial swing state Arizona, the city of Mesa is still waiting for the campaign to pay local law enforcement around $65,000 for Trump’s visit in October 2018 to Mesa-Gateway Airport, a city spokesperson confirmed.

The bill is for the Mesa Police Department’s work in providing officers for crowd control and traffic control, as well as the department’s rentals for barricades, towing and more, according to a 2018 letter to the campaign from attorney Nancy Sorensen on behalf of the city.

Ana Pereira, a city spokesperson, told NBC News in a statement that when the city “learned about the event and the conditions surrounding the venue, City officials took it upon themselves to implement any measures necessary to keep the public safe without first entering into an agreement with the campaign.”

However, she said that “the City calculated the public safety costs incurred from the campaign event the President attended.”

She said that while the campaign isn’t legally obligated to cover those costs, “[w]e believe the Trump 2020 campaign should reimburse our City for those taxpayer dollars, and we have invoiced the campaign accordingly.”

Similarly, Erie’s bills were to cover police, fire and public works personnel overtime, according to city spokesperson Rob Lee.

Trump addressed overtime pay during his latest Erie stop, just not in the way city officials may have hoped. Instead, he highlighted his no-taxes-on-overtime-pay proposal before he pivoted to his personal views on paying workers.

“I hated to give overtime. I hated it. I’d get other people,” Trump said. “I shouldn’t say this, but I’d get other people in. I wouldn’t pay.”

Trump and his campaign handlers are a bunch of deadbeats!

Tony

Vice President Kamala Harris, photographed at her official residence in Washington, DC, on October 7, 2024, wearing her own Gabriela Hearst suit and Tiffany earrings. Sittings Editor: Leslie Fremar. Photographed by Annie Leibovitz, Vogue, October 2024.

Dear Commons Community,

Kamala Harris is gracing the cover of the current edition of Vogue.  It is an incredible image of her looking very much like a world leader.  Here is the come-on for the article.

“Only rarely are individuals summoned for acts of national rescue, but in July, Vice President received one of those calls. With President Joe Biden’s decision to end his reelection campaign, the world looked to Harris with hopes and doubts.”

You can find the entire article at: https://vogue.com/article/kamala

Tony

Chris McGrath/Getty Images Europe.

Dear Commons Community,

Russia confirmed that Donald Trump sent the Kremlin sample Covid-19 tests in the early days of the pandemic, after revelations in veteran journalist Bob Woodward’s new book raised further questions about the former US president’s relationship with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.  As reported by CNN and ABC News.

The Trump administration “sent us several samples of test kits,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday, broadly supporting Woodward’s claim. His intervention comes after Trump denied the claims, telling ABC News they were “false.”

Woodward wrote in “War” that Trump “secretly sent Putin a bunch of Abbott Point of Care Covid test machines for his personal use.”

“Please don’t tell anybody you sent these to me,” Putin said to Trump, according to Woodward. “I don’t care,” Trump replied. “Fine.”

“No, no,” Putin said. “I don’t want you to tell anybody because people will get mad at you, not me. They don’t care about me.”

Peskov did not confirm whether or not those tests were specifically for Putin’s own use, as Woodward writes.

The Kremlin’s press secretary said: “At that time, the pandemic was starting, and the situation was very difficult for all countries.

“Of course, initially, all countries tried to exchange aid shipments with each other,” he continued. “At that time, we sent a shipment of ventilators to the United States, and the Americans sent us several samples of test kits, as those were practically unique items. Many countries were doing the same.”

The Kremlin’s response seemingly contradicts Trump’s denial of Woodward’s claims.

“He’s a storyteller. A bad one. And he’s lost his marbles,” Trump told ABC News of Woodward on Tuesday. In a statement, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said Trump gave Woodward “absolutely no access” for the book. “None of these made-up stories by Bob Woodward are true,” he said.

Citing a Trump aide, Woodward also reported that there have been “maybe as many as seven” calls between Trump and Putin since Trump left the White House in 2021. Peskov denied those claims, saying: “That is not true; it did not happen.” Trump also denied those claims to ABC News.

The frantic first weeks of the Covid-19 pandemic led to a diplomatic opening for Putin; the Trump White House was criticized at the time for purchasing medical supplies from Moscow, a move that was described by experts as a propaganda win for the Kremlin.

The Trump administration also spent $200 million sending thousands of ventilators around the world, starting weeks after the former president touted America as the “king of ventilators,” but without any established way to locate them, the Government Accountability Office found in a report. Russia was among the countries to receive those ventilators.

Woodward’s claims once again throw scrutiny on Trump’s relationship with Putin, weeks before the US presidential election.

They were quickly seized on by Democratic candidate and Vice President Kamala Harris, who said in an interview with Howard Stern: “People were dying by the hundreds. Everybody was scrambling to get these (test) kits … and this guy who was President of the United States is sending them to Russia? To a murderous dictator, for his personal use?”

“You’re getting played,” Harris said of Trump.

Trump has, for his part, continued to speak fondly of his relationship with Putin, whose invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 made him a pariah among Western leaders.

“I got along well with him. I hope to get along well with him again,” Trump said during an interview on X with billionaire Elon Musk. Trump added that getting along well with strongmen world leaders “is a good thing.”

Trump and Putin are pals and dangerous!

Tony