A spokesperson for the Russian government has responded to explosive audio recordings of Donald Trump threatening to bomb the 's**t' out of Moscow.
Earlier today (9 July), an audio tape revealed that President Trump had threatened both Russia's Vladimir Putin and China's Xi Jinping during a private conversation with donors during his election campaign.
The conversation - believed to have taken place at a private fundraising event in 2024 - was published by CNN and featured a conversation between Trump and multiple donors.
In the leaked audio, the 79-year-old can be heard saying: "With Putin, I said, ‘if you go into Ukraine, I’m going to bomb the s**t out of Moscow. I’m telling you I have no choice. So he goes, like, ‘I don’t believe you'. He said 'no way' and I said 'way'."
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It's not clear when the conversation between Trump and Putin took place or if it occurred before or after Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, which happened while Joe Biden was in office.
Trump then went on to claim that he'd issued a similar warning to President Xi regarding China's aggression towards neighbouring Taiwan, adding: "He thought I was crazy.
"He said 'Beijing! You can't even bomb [inaudible].' I said, 'I have no choice'. He believed me 10 per cent... and we never had a problem."
China has long considered Taiwan - an independent nation with a population of 23.4 million - part of their territory, and hasn't ruled out military intervention to bring the island under its control.
While the Chinese government is yet to respond to Trump's remarks, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has now appeared to deny that such a call ever took place.
"The fact is that there were no telephone conversations then," Peskov told Russian state news agency Tass.
"After all, we are talking, as far as I understand, about the period when Trump was not yet the president of the United States."
Peskov then went on to suggest the audio could potentially even be AI, adding: "Whether this is fake or not, we also do not know. There are a lot of fakes now. Often, there are many more fakes than true information. And we always proceed from this when we analyse certain news."
President Trump is yet to respond publicly to the leaked audio, however he has stepped up his criticism of Putin and Russia.
During a White House press briefing yesterday, Trump told reporters he was 'not happy' with the Russian leader.
"We get a lot of bulls*** thrown at us by Putin ... He's very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless," he said.
Topics: Donald Trump, Russia, US News, Vladimir Putin, World News, China
Brenna Cooper