This might be the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. pic.twitter.com/ZKo0365hAl
— Richard Hanania (@RichardHanania) March 22, 2025
Tucker Carlson: What did you think of [Putin]?
Steve Witkoff:
I liked him. .. In the second visit that I had it got personal. President Putin had commissioned a beautiful portrait of President Trump from the leading Russian artist and actually gave it to me and asked me to take it home to President Trump, which I brought home and delivered to him.
It’s been reported in the paper but it was such a gracious moment and told me a story, Tucker, about how when the president was shot he went to his local church and met with his priest and prayed for the president not because he was the president of the United States … he could become the president of the United States, but because he had a friendship with him and he was praying for his friend.
Can you imagine sitting there and listening to these kid on conversations? I came home and delivered that message to our president and delivered the painting and he was clearly touched by it. This is the kind of connection that we’ve been able to re-establish.
This is the real Trump Degrangement Syndrome. They actually seem to believe this bullshit.
Trump crony Witkoff appears to have absolutely no qualifications or experience to be this shadow Secretary of State and clearly suffers from the same wide-eyed gullibility about Putin that Trump does. It’s embarrassing.
Vladimir Putin is a former KGB agent. He is ruthlessly focused on his goal to re-establish some version of the former Soviet Union and he correctly sees Donald Trump as a total moron he can manipulate into helping him do it. And Trump now has around him nothing but fools in his own image who are either too thick to understand what Putin’s doing or are cynical careerists who could not care less about this country or the world as long as they are in proximity to power.
For instance, the actual Secretary of State, Li’l Marco who very neatly fits into the second category:
Over the first two months of the second Trump administration, Rubio has in some ways taken a back seat on the world stage to Witkoff, whose portfolio has expanded beyond his official title of special envoy to the Middle East.
Witkoff has been a leading player in some of Trump’s highest profile foreign policy wins — the release of hostages in Israel, a since-broken ceasefire in Gaza, and the return of American Marc Fogel from Russia after Witkoff traveled to Moscow to finalize negotiations for his release.
He’s jetted around the Middle East and become a key mediator in talks to end the war in Ukraine. Witkoff went back to Moscow for a face-to-face with Russian president Vladimir Putin last week to try to advance the administration’s ceasefire proposal.
Witkoff is “flying all over the world playing secretary of state,” said a person familiar with the dynamic. “He has one thing that no one else has — he has Trump’s 100% confidence.”[…]
“I think he is frustrated,” a senator still in touch with Rubio told CNN.
Did Marco really think that Trump had forgiven him for implying that he has a small penis? Not in a million years.
Trump just threw him to the wolves again, saying the El Salvador deportation scheme was all Rubio’s and he just went along with it. (We know it was Stephen Miller’s baby.) I give Marco maybe another 3 months. He gave up his Senate seat for yet another humiliation that will put the final coda to his mediocre career.