‘I’m a big fan!’ Trump’s gushing letters to Putin
DONALD Trump tried to cosy up to Vladimir Putin nearly a decade before he became US president, sending a gushing letter that said: ‘I’m a big fan.’
He also asked whether the Russian leader would ‘become my new best friend’, according to a report on Russian attempts to influence the 2016 US election.
It contains three unsolicited letters that Mr Trump, then a property developer and host of the US version of The Apprentice, sent to the Kremlin.
In 2007, Mr Trump wrote to Mr Putin to congratulate him on being named Time magazine’s Man of the Year. ‘You definitely deserve it,’ he said. ‘As you probably have heard, I am a big fan of yours!’ This sentence was underlined. It is not known if Mr Putin ever replied.
Then, in 2013, Mr Trump was so eager to have the Russian leader at the Miss Universe pageant, which he runs, that he wrote another personal letter. And in a tweet on June 18 that year, he asked: ‘Do you think Putin will be going to The Miss Universe Pageant in November in Moscow – if so, will he become my new best friend?’ Eight days later, he said in a letter to Mr Putin: ‘I know that our Moscow pageant will be our biggest and best Miss Universe ever...We turned down many other competing countries in favour of Russia. ‘He signed off the typed letter by writing in pen: ‘The world’s most beautiful women!’ Mr Putin did not attend.
The Senate Intelligence committee report said Mr Trump particularly wanted the competition to be in Moscow and was willing to ‘pull out all the stops’.
It found the Trump campaign’s regular contact with the Russians during the election posed a ‘grave counterintelligence threat’.