Trump Threatens Moscow, Beijing in Leaked 2024 Campaign Audio

Leaked audio tapes reveal that President Donald Trump privately boasted to campaign donors during his 2024 re-election campaign that he threatened Russian President Vladimir Putin with bombing Moscow if Russia invaded Ukraine, and made a similar threat to Chinese President Xi Jinping regarding Taiwan. Trump claimed that both leaders believed his threats to some extent, which he argued helped prevent invasions. These remarks echo his repeated public assertions that the Ukraine war would not have occurred under his presidency and that he had warned Putin against military aggression. However, since Trump took office in 2025, the conflict has escalated, and efforts to broker peace have stalled, leading to his expressed frustration with Putin's resistance to ceasefire talks. Trump also indicated openness to imposing new sanctions on Russia and announced increased U.S. weapons support for Ukraine amid the ongoing conflict. These revelations come from audio obtained by the authors of the book "2024: How Trump Retook The White House And The Democrats Lost America," aired by CNN, with the Trump campaign declining to comment on the tapes.