Witkoff Ruins My Iced Tea Break

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Wikipedia, the on-line encyclopedia (of sorts), describes Steve Witkoff thusly:

"Steven Charles Witkoff is a real estate investor and former attorney who is the founder of the Witkoff Group.  Since 2025, Witkoff has served as the United States special envoy to the Middle East and special envoy for peace missions.    He also acts as a de facto envoy to Russian President Vladimir Putin."

Witkoff attained his rather exalted rank within the US diplomatic community through his longstanding friendship and business relationship with Donald Trump, and through much of his diplomatic work during Trump's second term he has been paired with Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Sounds like a smart guy, right?

I thought so, too, until last Wednesday when news services began reporting that Witkoff had called war criminal Vladimir Putin a "humanitarian" to his face at a meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia.   My laugh was so spontaneous and explosive that iced tea came out my nose.

Putin, a humanitarian?  That may be the single most outrageous thing I've heard this millennium.  The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin in March of 2023 charging him with war crimes related to the unlawful deportation and transfer of children from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.  (He ordered the kidnapping of Ukrainian children and moved them to Russia!)

Additionally, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have documented Russian war crimes in Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine, and Syria, and Doctors Without Borders  (a Nobel Peace Prize recipient) has documented Russian war crimes in Chechnya.   And there have been numerous political assassinations in Russia and abroad that have also been attributed to Putin by credible sources.

Vlad is many things, Steve, but few of them are honorable and he is certainly not a humanitarian.  Yes, he let an elderly American prisoner go free last week, but that followed multiple gifts to the Kremlin from the Trump administration including the big purchase of Russian diesel fuel, the lifting of the Graham sanctions before they even went into effect, and the fact that somebody was messing with the Starlink satellite system controls to slow service to Ukraine and give Russia a big war advantage - and no one in the Trump administration seems to be overly concerned with identifying that culprit.  (The two most likely suspects for giving the treacherous order to slow the satellite service are Trump himself and Starlink owner Elon Musk.)

Hell, Steve, the US has been lavishing gifts on Putin for days now.  He probably thinks it's Christmas!

The only thing I can think of that would be more outrageous than trying to paint Vladimir Putin as a humanitarian would be referring to Donald Trump as an intellectual.  That would probably send tea flying out my ears!  Some things are beyond belief!