WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden turned testy with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during an April phone call, according to an explosive new book by Bob Woodward.

“What’s your strategy, man?” Biden asked the Israeli leader, according to Woodward. “We have to go into Rafah,” Netanyahu said, referring to the city in southern Gaza. “Bibi, you’ve got no strategy,” Biden responded.

The upcoming opus, War, chronicles President Biden’s struggle to prevent escalation of conflict in the Middle East, especially exasperation with Netan­yahu over futile efforts to get Israel and Hamas to reach a cease-fire.

According to CNN, which obtained a pre-release book copy, Wood­ward repeatedly quotes Biden as he discusses his personal and political challenges. Biden called Russian leader Putin “the epitome of evil,” blasted Netanyahu as a “liar” and said he “should never have picked” Merrick Garland as US attorney general.

In excerpts published on Tuesday by The Washington Post, where he is an associate editor, Woodward also lays out damning details and actions by former president Donald Trump, who the writer says has retained a personal relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin even as Trump campaigns for another presidential term and the Russian president conducts a war against Ukraine, a US ally.

In 2020, then-president Donald Trump secretly sent Covid test kits to Putin despite a US shortage during the pandemic, and spoke multiple times with the Russian leader after leaving office, says Woodward.

With the coronavirus ravaging the world, Trump sent a batch of test kits to his counterpart in Moscow. Putin accepted the supplies but sought to avoid political fallout for Trump, urging that he not reveal the dispatch of medical equipment.

According to Woodward, Putin told Trump: “I don’t want you to tell anybody because people will get mad at you, not me.” Woodward also cites an unnamed Trump aide who indicated the Republican may have spoken to Putin up to seven times since leaving the White House in 2021.

Published in Dawn, October 9th, 2024