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 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 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 Putin ever replied.
Then, in 2013, Mr Trump was so eager to have the Russian leader at the Miss Universe pagaent, which he runs, 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 Putin: ‘I hope you have heard by now the exciting news that we are bringing the Miss Universe 2013 Pageant to Russia for the first time in the 62-year history. 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!’ Putin did not attend. It is not known if he replied to the invitation.
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’. The nearly 1,000-page report is the culmination of a bipartisan probe spanning more than three years.
Its findings largely echo those of special counsel Robert Mueller, who stopped short of saying that Mr Trump had committed a crime.
The President said he did not ‘know anything about’ the latest report and had ‘nothing’ to do with Russia.
n Bill Clinton has savaged Mr Trump, urging voters to avoid ‘four more years of blame, bully and belittle’. The former US leader told the Democratic National Convention: ‘If you want a President who defines the job as spending hours a day watching TV and zapping people on social media, he’s your man.’