Putin put two next-to-nothingburgers on the table, and Witkoff is touting them as if they’re the most momentous concessions in diplomatic history.
Before I dive into the Ukraine comments by President Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, let’s take a brief look at his comments regarding Hamas breaking its word and not releasing the remaining hostages, which the president has demanded several times — threatening “hell to pay” — and that Hamas has promised to do, several times.
Appearing on Fox News Sunday, Witkoff said, “I was in Doha. I met with many of the Arab leaders at the Arab Summit. I thought we had a deal, an acceptable deal. I even — I even thought we had an approval from Hamas, maybe that’s just me getting — getting, you know, duped . . . but I thought we were there and evidently, we weren’t. So, this is on Hamas. The United States stands with the State of Israel.”
On March 14, Witkoff had complained that Hamas was publicly claiming it was willing to release hostages “while privately making demands that are entirely impractical without a permanent ceasefire.”
Yes, Mr. Witkoff. You were duped. From all the available evidence, duping you is not quite as difficult to do as you think it is.
In his interview with Tucker Carlson, Witkoff said, “What does Hamas want? I think they want to stay there till the end of time, and they want to rule Gaza, and that’s unacceptable. We had to know what they wanted. What they want is unacceptable. What’s acceptable to us is they need to demilitarize. Then maybe they could stay there a little bit, right? Be involved politically.”
Got that? Witkoff is declaring Hamas can remain involved in Gaza politics, as long as they demilitarize. Recall that the Hamas charters, both the 1988 original and the 2017 revision, call for the destruction of the State of Israel.
On to Ukraine . . .
Shannon Bream: Are you convinced [Putin] wants peace?
Witkoff: I feel that he wants peace. The president had two very productive calls this week, or last week, I should say. One with President Zelensky, one with President Putin. I was in on– I sat and listened to both of them. In both conversations, it was all about a lasting peace. Lots of progress got made last week. The parties agreed to an energy infrastructure moratorium on attacks for energy infrastructure, I think that you’re going to see in Saudi Arabia on Monday, some real progress, particularly as it affects a Black Sea cease-fire on ships between both countries, and from that you’ll naturally gravitate into a full-on shooting cease-fire.
Now, keep in mind, the energy-infrastructure moratorium Witkoff is bragging about was almost immediately broken by Russia; two hours after the Russian Foreign Ministry said Putin had given the order to not strike energy infrastructure, a Russian guided bomb knocked out the electrical power in half of the Ukrainian city of Slovyansk. Additional Russian strikes in Donetsk reportedly left 134 settlements in the region without gas, water, and electricity.
Then on Friday, the Sudzha natural-gas metering station in Russia’s Kursk region blew up. The Russians say the Ukrainians blew it up before retreating; the Ukrainians say the Russians repeatedly shelled the metering station.
As for the “Black Sea cease-fire,” there’s a lot less shooting in the Black Sea than there used to be because one-third of the Russian Navy’s Black Sea fleet is now at the bottom of the ocean and the Russians were forced to abandon the occupied Crimean port of Sevastopol on July 15, 2024. (Everything the Ukrainian Navy has achieved at sea in the war so far has been done with drones. At the start of the war, the Ukrainian Navy scuttled its own flagship to prevent it from being captured or seized.)
Putin put two next-to-nothingburgers on the table, and Witkoff is touting them as if they’re the most momentous concessions in diplomatic history.
Then Witkoff went on to whitewash Putin’s abominable history of human-rights abuses:
Shannon Bream: Do you feel like there’s a misconception though about the characterization of him as a tyrant or someone whose political opponents often disappear or die?
Witkoff: I think in my 68 years on this Earth, I’ve never ever seen a situation where there isn’t two sides to a story. It’s just never as black and white as people want to portray. So, there are grievances on both sides. . . . Our job is to narrow the issues, bring the parties together, and stop the killing. That’s the game plan, and that’s what we’re all there to do, and I think that we’re doing a pretty effective job of it.
A few moments later . . .
Shannon Bream: You seem convinced that he doesn’t want to expand the territory beyond what he’s taken now. I know there’s going to be conversation about how much of that Ukraine does or doesn’t get back, but you’re convinced that he’s not going to go further or have aspirations towards Europe. Obviously, they’re concerned about that being much closer to this geographically, but 2014 we had Crimea, that hasn’t come back, and he’s gone far beyond that in this most recent attack on Ukraine. So why are you convinced that he won’t press further if he’s given some reward or some territory this time around?
Witkoff: Well, look he’s been at war for several years. It’s in large part been about those five regions, and it’s in his speeches. It’s there’s a view within the country of Russia that, um, that these are Russian territories, that there are referendums within these territories that that justify these actions. This is not me taking sides. I’m just identifying what the issues are. . . .
I just don’t see that he wants to take all of Europe. This is a much different situation than it was in World War II. In World War II there was no NATO. So, I — just you have countries that are armed there — to me it just — it just does — I take him at his word in this sense. And I think the Europeans are beginning to come to that belief too. But it sort of doesn’t matter that’s an academic issue.
Got that? Further Russian aggression in Eastern Europe “is an academic issue,” because the Europeans are starting to share Witkoff’s opinion that Putin can be taken at his word. If he made a statement like that after playing football, you would put him in the concussion protocol.
Elsewhere, as noted Sunday, in his recent sitdown with Carlson, Witkoff insisted that “Putin’s got a huge respect for the president.”
How many deeply secure people do you know who feel the need to regularly remind everyone how much they are respected?
Below, Jay talks a bit about Witkoff gushing over Putin’s giving Trump a portrait of the U.S. president, and the story of Putin praying at his local church when President Trump was shot.
This is all on video. You can watch for yourself.
The man handling the U.S. negotiation with Europe insists Putin is not a bad guy, that Putin can be trusted, and that there’s no threat of his attacking Eastern Europe or NATO allies. But he admits he might have been duped by Hamas’s false promises.
It seems more than fair to wonder why a man who spent his career as a real estate lawyer, with no background in international diplomacy, is currently simultaneously handling two of the United States’ toughest and most difficult international negotiations. Isn’t this what we have a secretary of state for? Isn’t this what we have ambassadors for?
When I write, “We have effectively switched sides in the Russia-Ukraine war” or “the policy of this administration is to be as helpful as possible to Vladimir Putin and as hurtful as possible to the Ukrainian people,” I get accused of suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome. (I’m the strange kind of TDS sufferer who tells Washington Post readers how effective Trump’s immigration and border policies are, or lists what Trump is likely to get right in his second term, or praises the airstrikes against the Houthis, or defends Elon Musk when I think he’s right, or. . . .)
When I was writing about the Wuhan lab leak, I was called racist and xenophobic and accused of trafficking in outlandish conspiracy theories. (When I wasn’t being accused of ignoring the story or being late to it.)
When I was writing about Joe Biden’s age, memory, and health issues, I was called ageist and accused of perpetuating “the sort of gross, lowest-common-denominator politics that drive people away from public life.”
Why do you think accusing me of TDS is going to change what I think or what I do?