Witkoff, Steve

5 25 bit belated PRIMARY EZ 2 26

NY REAL ESTATE GUY RUNNING SHADOW FOREIGN POLICY?

SEE SON NEPO BABY ON SHITCOIN CORRUPT 3 ARAB

bd of peace gazaBS PROFITEER?!

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on his personal phone IN THE KREMLIN WHILE IN SIGNAL CHAT?!

tim miller 5 25 3 mtg in kremlin w/ no US translator?!

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2 26 GOT CUT FROM SPY SHEIK? 49% WORLD LIB

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pal of adelson

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WITKOFF CALLS HUMANITARIAN, ACCURE WAR CRIMES

Fox News chief political analyst Brit Hume put President Donald Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff on blast after he praised Russian President Vladimir Putin as a "humanitarian" during peace talks in St. Petersburg.

When asked about how he felt about the interaction, Hume did not hold back, calling Witkoff’s comment extravagant before adding: "The guy's a war criminal, for God's sake, and he's rained down bombs on civilians without regard to human life."

Hume, speaking with host John Roberts on Wednesday's edition of America Reports, called the Putin praise "absurd," pointing to Russia's war with Ukraine and the high civilian casualty count, with millions more displaced.

Witkoff gave the compliment after Putin announced the release of Stephen Hubbard, a 74-year-old American who had spent more than four years in Russian custody.

"You are a humanitarian also, sir, and I salute that, I commend you, and I thank you again," Witkoff told Putin during their meeting.

Hubbard, a retired teacher from Michigan, was detained by Russian forces in Ukraine in 2022. Russian authorities accused the then-70-year-old of being a mercenary for Ukraine. He denied the allegations, and the United States determined that he was illegally detained.

Roberts excused Witkoff’s comments as diplomatic flattery, and Hume acknowledged that possibility, while seemingly taking a dig at Trump’s diesel deal with Russia

Hume then discussed Donald Trump’s reason for putting a pause on the Russia sanctions in Sen. Lindsey Graham’s bill.

The Fox News star said the president told reporters on the South Lawn that you don’t punish people you’re trying to strike a deal with.

“When you’re trying to get a guy out of what has been locked up for four years illegally, you don’t insult the guy,” Hume said. “Maybe you flatter him.”

North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis called the praise "embarrassing and outrageous," mentioning how the comment is insulting to the families of Ukrainian children killed or made homeless by the war.

Texas Sen. John Cornyn offered a rebuke, calling Putin a "stone-cold killer."

The criticism comes as Trump faces criticism for what many believe is capitulating to Putin’s demands and turning his back on Ukraine.

During the Fox News discussion, Hume also addressed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's willingness to freeze current battle lines as a potential starting point for peace talks.

Hume said the proposal now requires a response from Putin, who has rejected previous proposals to put the brakes on the fighting. He also noted that it challenges Trump, who has repeatedly blamed Zelensky for the lack of progress toward ending the war that Russia started.

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kush witk

an 9 26

'Widely circulating' Russian nickname for 'clownish' Trump aides revealed

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an 9 26

President Donald Trump and his high-ranking officials are engaged in a simultaneous project of spreading far right ideologies worldwide — and raking in billions while doing so.

In an article by The Atlantic's Anne Applebaum on Monday, Americans learned the full extent of Trump's mixing of exporting paranoid politics and turning a profit from Brazil and the United Arab Emirates to threatening longtime democratic allies like Canada and Denmark. She added that the major industries helping Trump do this include oil and gas, rare earth minerals and cryptocurrency.

"American power is no longer deployed solely by trained diplomats and reliable officials, working through state channels. Informal envoys, private companies, online grifters, and hardened ideologues both inside and outside the government matter more," Applebaum wrote. "Unlike their predecessors, these people do not talk about spreading democracy, and don’t want to build long-term relationships. They don’t care about America’s reputation. They are deploying the tools of American diplomacy and government for their own purposes, to promote their own business interests or their own ideological goals, because, suddenly, they can."

She also added that "the clan of predators currently in charge of the U.S. federal government is no different. Wrongly described as 'isolationists,' many of its true believers don’t think of themselves as ordinary Republicans who won an election and will temporarily hold power until the next election. Nor are they mere appendages of Trump. They believe they represent something much greater: the vanguard of a movement that will alter not just America, but the world."

Applebaum contrasted the attitude of Trump supporters with that of Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who famously said during the 2008 election that his opponent, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), was a decent man with whom he happened to disagree.

"Their enemies are existential, and they are international: super-spreaders of a 'wokeness' plague, or proponents of a fictitious 'censorship-industrial complex,' or advocates of 'regulation' that will hamper American business, or self-hating promoters of “mass migration” who want to drown Western civilization in a sea of brown-faced aliens," Applebaum explained. "To maintain their power and defeat these enemies, the predators, like their Bolshevik counterparts, cannot rely on traditional diplomacy, because they don’t trust its practitioners."

She concluded, "Nor do they trust many of the leaders of the democratic states that have long shared the same political and economic values as America. Although the U.S. military and intelligence services continue to cooperate closely with allied governments, the ideologues in and out of the administration are actively seeking to replace them with people and parties who share their disdain for liberal democracy and for what were once considered, at least aspirationally, to be American values. To do so, they need to expand their global influence, manipulate elections in former partner nations, and alter the flows of money and power, especially inside other democracies. Much of the world has always believed America’s defense of democracy to be hypocritical, and that American-led economic integration was self-serving. But now even the people who sincerely believed in the postwar American project are discovering that it no longer exists."

Trump himself has raked in billions since assuming office in his second term, while his sons have netted millions using their foreign policy connections to get involved in matters like investing in tungsten mines. Earlier this month, a Gallup poll found a historically high number of Americans are upset with government corruption, writing that "Americans’ perceptions of government corruption in the U.S. are at their highest level in 20 years, with 89 [percent] of U.S. adults saying it is widespread. That figure is up 10 percentage points from last year and well above readings in the 72 [percent] to 79 [percent] range between 2010 and 2025."

The poll added, "Democrats’ perceptions of government corruption have risen the most sharply since 2024 compared with other party groups. In former President Joe Biden’s final year in office, 57 [percent] of Democrats said corruption was widespread in government; that rose to 76 [percent] in 2025, the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term, and reached 91 [percent] this year. The figure among political independents (90 [percent]) aligns more closely with Democrats’ than with Republicans’ (83 [percent]) and is up 12 points since 2024."

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MMA

Fox’s ”nuke” justification for the Iran war — and the higher prices it's wrought — has collapsed

Is it a small price to pay if you get nothing in return?

Written by Matt Gertz

:{Published 05/05/26

Fox pundits have repeatedly argued that the Iran war’s costs are “a small price to pay” for its supposed prevention of the imminent threat posed by Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon.

But a new U.S. intelligence assessment reportedly found that after two months of war, “the time Iran would need to build a nuclear weapon has not changed since last summer, when analysts estimated that a U.S.-Israeli attack had pushed back the timeline to up to a year,” according to exclusive reporting from Reuters.

Trump’s war of choice against Iran is now in its third month and headed for strategic defeat. While U.S. and Israeli strikes have killed Iranian leaders and severely damaged their military, the regime is intact and has established control over the Strait of Hormuz, a vital channel for global trade. Americans are seeing gas, diesel, and fertilizer prices soar as a result, and the direct cost of the war continues to grow.

Some Fox pundits, in the face of plummeting support for the war, have argued that these costs are relatively small compared to the benefit of preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon — but according to the new U.S. intelligence assessment, there was and remains no imminent threat of that happening.

Fox Business host Larry Kudlow, a former Trump economic adviser, argued in a Monday Fox appearance that skyrocketing fuel costs are “a small price to pay to stop the nuclear activity” from Iran, which he described as “the most gruesome regime we’ve seen in a hundred years” (note that this period includes Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, and Mao Tse-Tung’s China).

After Kudlow went on to say that “four and a half dollars gasoline — it's not a great idea, wouldn't want it forever, but it really isn't doing all that much harm,” Fox Business contributor Marcus Lemonis added, “I think you said it right, Larry. We don't want it forever, but this short-term pain has a big, big benefit to it.”

Fox host Sean Hannity, a close ally of the president and major supporter of his war, similarly claimed last week that skyrocking gas prices are merely “short-term pain” justified by preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb.

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Citation

From the April 30, 2026, edition of Fox News' Hannity

“It certainly is short-term pain,” Hannity told a guest during his April 30 broadcast. “Nobody wants to pay more for gas. Diesel is even more expensive, as you point out.”

“However, in exchange for not giving our children and grandchildren nuclear weapons, again, in the short term, I think I’d take that deal every day of the week,” he added.

And Fox host Todd Piro, during a rare mention of the $25 billion estimate a Pentagon analyst gave last week for the early cost of the war, said of that price tag, “If we are dead because Iran strikes us with a nuke, all these economic discussions are moot.”

But as Reuters reported on May 4, U.S. intelligence agencies did not assess that Iran could quickly obtain a weapon before the 2026 war began — or even before striking nuclear facilities last year — much less that the country could deploy it on U.S. soil:

U.S. intelligence assessments indicate that the time Iran would need to build a nuclear weapon has not changed since last summer, when analysts estimated that a U.S.-Israeli attack had pushed back the timeline to up to a year, according to three sources familiar ‌with the matter.

The assessments of Tehran's nuclear program remain broadly unchanged even after two months of a war that U.S. President Donald Trump launched in part to stop the Islamic Republic from developing a nuclear bomb.

…

U.S. intelligence agencies had concluded prior ⁠to June's 12-day war that Iran likely could produce enough bomb-grade uranium for a weapon and build a bomb in around three to six months, said two of the sources, all of whom requested anonymity to discuss U.S. intelligence.

Following the June strikes by the U.S. that hit the Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan nuclear complexes, U.S. intelligence estimates pushed that timeline back to about nine months to a year, said the two sources and a person familiar with the assessments.

This new assessment further demolishes arguments for the war that Fox propagandists like Hannity offered after U.S. strikes began in late February.

Trump envoy Steve Witkoff, who negotiated on behalf of the U.S. in talks with Iranian counterparts in the lead-up to the war, helped fuel those arguments by claiming on Hannity’s Fox show that Iranian negotiators had admitted possessing a uranium stockpile that could be weaponized “in roughly one week” and used to build 11 nuclear bombs. Witkoff lacks prior experience in nuclear diplomacy — but he does have sizable business interests in the Gulf region, at times partnering with Trump’s family business.

### Tulsi Gabbard just shattered Sean Hannity’s case for the Iran war

03/19/26 12:56 PM EDT

### In Iran, the most consequential test of the Fox-Trump feedback loop yet

03/02/26 1:12 PM EST

### Dire Strait: Trump’s Fox Cabinet ignored Hormuz in the month before the U.S. attacked Iran

03/13/26

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PSW 4 26 CORRUPT

ARAB JUSTIN SUN SUE LIBERTY, DRONE PLUS GOLF MERGER

Apr 22, 2026 Pod Save the World

Tommy and Ben break down another chaotic and consequential week in global affairs. Trump blinks and extends the ceasefire with Iran, but the Strait of Hormuz remains closed as US-Iran negotiations stall. Meanwhile, an internal power struggle between Iran's elected leaders and military is complicating talks, and the human cost for ordinary Iranians continues to mount. In Lebanon, Trump stunned Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu by publicly ordering Israel to stop bombing, but the IDF continues to occupy southern Lebanon, and an explosive image of an IDF soldier desecrating a statue of Jesus Christ threatens to erode evangelical support for Israel.

The guys also dig into the sprawling conflicts of interest and corruption plaguing Trump's foreign policy team: Jared Kushner's billion-dollar Gulf slush fund, Don Jr. and Eric Trump’s drone grift, and the Trump family’s foray into the crypto and fusion energy business. Finally, they talk about the historic election results in Hungary and Bulgaria,

Trump’s slow-rolling regime change efforts in Cuba, and reports that FBI Director Kash Patel is such a sloppy drunk that he’s become a threat to national security. Then Tommy is joined by former USAID official Nicholas Enrich to talk about his new book, Into the Wood Chipper: A Whistleblower’s Account of How the Trump Administration Shredded USAID. Preorder Ben’s book All We Say: The Battle for American Identity: A History in 15 Speeches and subscribe to his Substack here.

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LVIV HERALD

On 23 April 2025, in an atmosphere charged with fatigue from war and wary hope, a peace proposal was privately delivered to European and Ukrainian officials in London by US Special Envoy General Keith Kellogg. The same document was reportedly handed to Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on the same day by US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff. Though no official document has been published, reasonably consistent reporting by both The Daily Telegraph in London and Russia’s TASS news agency has enabled observers to reconstruct the seven key points of the proposal—dubbed informally as the “Kellogg-Witkoff Plan.”

The Seven Points of the Peace Proposal

Recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea by the United States: Crimea would be acknowledged de jure as part of the Russian Federation by the United States (only?), a major concession to Moscow.
Autonomy for occupied Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts (along current front lines) under Ukrainian de juresovereignty: These regions would remain formally part of Ukraine but enjoy a high degree of autonomy, with local militias retaining some policing powers—a model reminiscent of the defunct Minsk agreements.
A phased withdrawal of Russian forces from other occupied territories: In contrast to the treatment of Crimea, other areas occupied after February 2022—primarily parts of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson—would be returned to Ukrainian control over a set timetable. For an unknown period, the US Government (including the US Armed Forces?) would take control over the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant facility at Enerhodar, restarting the facility and distributing electricity between the parts of Ukraine currently under Ukrainian and Russian control.
Deployment of a European (non-NATO) peacekeeping force in Ukraine: A significant concession to European capitals, this would allow the EU to provide military stabilisation without NATO involvement, a nod to Russian security sensitivities. There would be a mechanism of accountability for war crimes, the details of which are unclear.
Signing of a US-Ukraine critical minerals agreement prior to final peace: This controversial clause requires Ukraine to commit key mineral extraction rights to US companies as a precondition for the final agreement, raising eyebrows about American commercial motivations.
Lifting of US sanctions on Russia upon partial implementation: Sanctions would be eased once Russia begins troop withdrawals—without waiting for a full settlement, including on Crimea—contradicting European policies tying sanctions relief to full Russian withdrawal.
Permanent neutrality for Ukraine with security guarantees: Ukraine would adopt a formal status of neutrality, backed by international guarantees excluding NATO membership, although the nature of the guarantees remains unspecified. EU membership would be permitted.

Reactions: Sharp Divides and Deep Suspicion

The proposal has been met with alarm, confusion and, in some quarters, quiet intrigue.

Ukrainian Reaction: President Zelenskyy’s office issued a terse statement calling the proposal “unacceptable in its current form,” emphasising that any recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea is “a red line no Ukrainian government can cross.” Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba reportedly told EU counterparts that the document “trades sovereignty for false stability” and accused Washington of “negotiating behind our backs.”

Russian Reaction: Moscow, by contrast, has responded with cautious optimism. A Kremlin spokesperson called the plan “a constructive basis for discussion,” though sources close to the Russian Security Council noted that Moscow was “noncommittal” on the phased withdrawal clause and expected more flexibility regarding military tribunals for war crimes.

European Reaction: European capitals were caught off-guard.French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Schulz issued a joint statement reiterating the EU’s stance that “no sanctions will be lifted until the complete withdrawal of Russian forces from all Ukrainian territory, including Crimea”.Diplomatsin Brussels were said to be "infuriated"by the lack of consultation and the commercial elements of the deal,particularly the minerals agreement.

The Trump Factor: Undiplomatic Pressure and Abrasive Deadlines

US President Donald Trump, whose administration dispatched Kellogg and Witkoff, has taken a highly personal approach to the process, one that is unorthodox even by the standards of 21st-century diplomacy. In a press conference at Mar-a-Lago following the London meetings, Trump declared, “If Ukraine and Russia don’t figure this out in a few days, we walk. We’re not in the business of endless war. Europe can pay for it if they want a forever war.”

This hardball rhetoric has done little to calm nerves in Kyiv or Brussels. One senior EU official remarked off-record: “This isn’t diplomacy. It’s extortion with a Stars and Stripes on top.”

Uneven Architecture: Crimea Versus the Rest

A striking feature of the proposal is the differential treatment of occupied territories. By separating Crimea from other areas under Russian control, the document implicitly legitimises the 2014 annexation. This not only undermines years of Western policy upholding the international legal order, but threatens to create a precedent for future conflicts over frozen zones of occupation.

Commercial Strings Attached: The Minerals Clause

The requirement that Ukraine sign a critical minerals agreement with the US before any final peace has been interpreted by critics as the monetisation of war diplomacy. While US officials argue this guarantees Ukraine’s economic future, European and Ukrainian officials see it as a veiled attempt to secure long-term strategic resource control for American firms at a time when Ukraine is vulnerable.

Prospects for Acceptance and Compliance

Ukraine is unlikely to accept the plan in its current form, especially with domestic political pressures and military leadership firmly opposed to the compromise on Crimea. Any government that signed such a deal could face national outrage or collapse.

Russia may be tempted by the offer—especially the partial lifting of sanctions and recognition of Crimea—but would likely delay implementation in hopes of extracting further concessions.

The United States may indeed “walk away” from the process. Given Trump’s transactional approach and the electoral pressures of a volatile 2026 midterm cycle, the US might pivot to a hands-off policy or double down on commercial extraction deals in Ukraine, regardless of the war’s outcome.

What Next? Toward a Fractured Future

Should the US exit the negotiations, the conflict may see a return to unrestrained military escalation. Both Ukraine and Russia are reportedly repositioning forces for a new summer offensive. Without a unified Western front, and with Washington appearing more interested in mineral access than mediation, the war may evolve into a prolonged, decentralised conflict—fuelled by European arms, contested regional legitimacy, and unacknowledged occupation.

The Kellogg-Witkoff Plan, then, may be less a blueprint for peace than a map of fractured priorities—one that reveals the underlying tensions between Western actors, between diplomacy and commerce, between sovereignty and strategy. In this divided landscape, the hope for a durable peace remains, but it grows more precarious by the day.

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an 3 26

In addition to his work as a journalist, British reporter Ben Judah is known for his work in the U.K. government — where he served as a special adviser to David Lammy in the Foreign Office. And in an article published by the i Paper in the UK on March 6, Judah recalls his initial reaction after learning that U.S. President Donald Trump had chosen real estate mogul Steve Witkoff as a special envoy to the Middle East.

"Had Trump really appointed some real estate pal of his to wrap up the Gaza War?," Judah remembers. "There was a mixture of shock and scorn in the ranks at how this could possibly have come about. A few old hands predicted his time in diplomacy would be a failure. He'd fail to launch. But Witkoff kept on rising, as the Democrats levelled accusations he sought to enrich himself and the Trump family with fabulous real estate deals in Russia, even Iran, once he'd landed those prize-winning peace deals."

Judah recalls that native New Yorker Witkoff was quite "globalized" when Trump appointed him yet is "very different from a diplomat" in his outlook.

Witkoff, Judah argues, is very much a reflection of the second Trump Administration —which, he warns, is showing a total disregard for diplomacy during its war against Iran.

"The fact is that Trump is not running an administration but a court — where the closeness and confidence of the king is key," Judah laments. "A court where (Israeli Prime Minister) Bibi Netanyahu would turn out to be the greatest courtier. The rise of Witkoff was a story of taking on more and more for the boss. The truth is, in politics, that's not always a good thing. Because when it goes wrong, it's suddenly all on you. There was no grand deal to trumpet for Trump on Fox this week."

Judah continues, "Instead, Witkoff marched through making a series of nuclear justifications that will be pored over by Democrats, historians and journalists like Colin Powell’s at the United Nations on the eve of the Iraq War. Whatever happens now, Witkoff's rise will never end at a Nobel gala night in Oslo. Instead his name will forever be linked to a cataclysmic failure of diplomacy. Then again, maybe it was always thus. No crying in the casino, as they say. One's rise and success can easily turn into catastrophic disaster, with you owning the mess, if you play at the highest stakes on the world stage."

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AN 2 26

Gizmodo reported on Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump’s Wednesday Mar-a-Lago conference pushing their family crypto company, World Liberty Financial.

“In many ways, it’s a victory lap for the Trump family, a recognition that there is no mechanism available to stop the unprecedented corruption that’s being done out in the open, as foreign governments and U.S.-based executives jostle to please the Trump regime and profit from their proximity to political power,” reports Gizmodo.

“We were the most canceled people in the world in 2020, 2021,” Eric Trump told CNBC host Sara Eisen. “And it’s really great to almost have this retribution where all of a sudden we start pushing an agenda. Our agenda was to modernize finance, to allow that to never, ever, ever happen to anybody again.”

“The part Eric Trump is leaving out,” said Gizmodo writer Matt Novak, “is President Trump’s attempt at a self-coup on Jan. 6, 2021, sending a violent mob to storm the U.S. Capitol in a bid to remain in power after losing the 2020 election. The president was banned from the major social media platforms, and his family was cut off from some banking opportunities over his effort to overthrow the government. The president has since sued JPMorgan Chase and CEO Jamie Dimon over the moves.”

Gizmodo also reports the Trump sons “bragged” to CNBC about how opening their own crypto company has given them “credibility.” But Gizmodo counters that World Liberty Financial’s stablecoin, USD1, is “a fiat-backed cryptocurrency that the Trumps have tried to tout as a brilliant hedge against the traditional financial system, an argument that doesn’t make much sense given how dependent it is on that same system for stability.”

Donald Trump Jr. remains irritated that the family was briefly debanked, and he did not appreciate how banks could drop a customer at their own discretion.

“Crypto totally democratizes the ability for people to transact, to do finance, to get the loans that they need for businesses that make sense. That didn’t exist for everyone,” said Donald Trump Jr., which is a “frankly idiotic” suggestion said Novak.

“Just last year, World Liberty blacklisted Justin Sun’s blockchain address, which has over 595 million WLFI tokens, due to suspicious transactions,” said Gizmodo. “… Every financial institution, whether it’s focused on crypto or traditional banking, has to follow certain laws and regulations and has the discretion to lock up funds or boot anyone it doesn’t like.”

When Eisen asked the Trump sons about the $187 million paid to Trump family reps by people connected to the Emirati royal family, Donald Trump Jr. insisted that his father had “nothing to do with it” and that the UAE investment wasn’t at all related to the AI chips that President Donald Trump immediately granted the UAE access to after their generosity.

“We’ve been dealing with the conflict-of-interest stuff for years. And they tried all this nonsense the first time around. Frankly, it’s gotten old,” Donald Trump Jr. told Eisen.

Novak points out that Jr. is referring to the fact that “no other White House in modern history has seen the president and his family profit in such a galling way.”

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AN 2 26

The global diplomatic goals of the U.S. used to be handled by a vast corps of skilled professionals, but under Trump, virtually all overseas goals are in the hands of one "witless" envoy, as James Ball wrote for The i Paper, possibly because he has a background "almost identical" to the president's.

Ball broke down Steve Witkoff's unlikely and alarming ascent in a scathing analysis from Wednesday. Initially chosen to oversee an Israeli ceasefire deal in Gaza, he was later upgraded to overseeing all missions in the Middle East, including brokering a deal to defuse tensions with Iran.

Now, he is also handling talks to end the years-long war between Russia and Ukraine. This high-stakes job has seen him make many alarming breaks from standard diplomatic procedures, such as meeting solo with Russian President Vladimir Putin and insisting that he trusts the Kremlin's English interpreters. These decisions overwhelmingly give Russia an upper hand, something Witkoff might not mind, Ball noted, as he has previously praised Putin and said that he does not "regard him as a bad guy."

"Is he amoral, or just incompetent?" Ball asked. "Usually, sensitive diplomatic negotiations are left to people with huge experience of the areas in which they operate. Typically, the lead negotiator has lived and worked in the region for decades, speaks the relevant languages, and has relationships with key power brokers in the various factions involved. They know the history, the resentments, the red lines. The hope is they can leverage that into the patient drudgework of diplomacy, dragging often reluctant parties over the line to a deal none of them will love, but that they can all live with."

Witkoff cannot meet that standard for all the missions he has been tasked with, Ball argued, because "No one on the planet has intimate experience of Israel, Gaza, Iran, Russia and Ukraine." That matter is made by the fact that the billionaire has had no diplomatic experience at all prior to his appointment as Trump's "Special Envoy for Peace Missions." The president, Ball suggested, seemed to pick him because of their strikingly similar professional backgrounds.

"His background is almost identical to Trump’s – Witkoff is a billionaire who made his money through real estate deals," Ball explained. "His portfolio is even more U.S.-focused than the President’s, and the handful of major deals his company closed outside the U.S. were in London. Witkoff knows the world of US real estate, and little else."

With "the witless Witkoff" now handling the Russia-Ukraine peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, Ball wrote that Trump has made him all of Europe's problem, with no regard for the consequences of his failure.

"It is Ukrainians first, and then Europeans, who will pay with their lives if Witkoff screws up," Ball wrote. "Americans will sit a continent away and pretend it’s not their problem if it blows up in their faces."

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As details about President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace and its plans for the reconstruction of Gaza trickle out, two things become increasingly clear: Palestinians have barely, if at all, been consulted in these plans; and the people in Trump’s orbit stand to benefit from the project the most.

The U.N. Security Council approved the Board of Peace as a mechanism for implementing Trump’s 20-point peace plan for Israel and Gaza back in November, though its mandate now appears much broader. The BoP itself consists of high-level representatives from Gulf nations, Israel, Serbia, Albania, and Argentina, among others, with Trump himself as the chair and ultimate decision-maker. Absent from the Board of Peace are representatives from almost every EU country except Bulgaria and Hungary, and anyone representing Palestine.

*More from Ellen Ioanes

The BoP’s executive board—tasked with putting the BoP’s vision into practice—is composed of billionaire businessmen like Marc Rowan, CEO of private equity firm Apollo Global Management; Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner; and Steve Witkoff, the real estate mogul turned Trump donor turned special envoy to the Middle East. There’s Ajay Banga, the World Bank president who prioritizes private-sector investment in global development, as well as U.S. Secretary of State and national security adviser Marco Rubio, deputy national security adviser Robert Gabriel, and former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair.

The special Gaza Executive Board adds Israeli-Cypriot real estate mogul Yakir Gabay, who enjoys a close friendship with Kushner, as well as representatives from the UAE, Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey. Sigrid Kaag, the Dutch U.N. coordinator for humanitarian aid into Gaza and the lone humanitarian-sector representative, and former U.N. special coordinator for the Middle East peace process Nickolay Mladenov lend the group a dash of gravitas—but just a dash.

The Palestinian role is reduced to a 15-member technocratic and “apolitical” governance body, led by engineer and former Palestinian Authority official Ali Shaath.

Details about how exactly Trump’s group plans to carry out Gaza’s reconstruction are limited thus far, but the number of real estate and finance bigwigs on the executive board indicates that it will likely be a highly privatized endeavor.

“When you look at the executive committee, I think it is absolutely unprecedented in multilateral organizations, which I guess the Board of Peace is supposed to be, even if it’s not really [multilateral] because of Trump’s dominance over it,” said Hugh Lovatt, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “I think it is nonetheless pretty much unprecedented to have such explicit power exerted by private individuals who are there by virtue of their business interests.” The Prospect reached out to two members of the Gaza Executive Board with questions about how board members would keep their business interests separate from their political role, but did not receive a response by press time.

IFrame Content

Multilateral institutions like the U.N. are supposed to operate under cooperative and humanitarian principles; representatives to such bodies are supposed to represent the interests of their nations or regions, not their private businesses.

“President Trump does not seem to do anything unless it benefits the U.S., but more specifically, unless it seems to benefit himself,” Lovatt said. “And this is not something that is exclusive to Gaza or the Board of Peace, and I think is very much interwoven into his presidency.”

Among those private individuals, Kushner’s business activities have raised significant concern. He is now the owner and principal of Affinity Partners, an investment firm that doesn’t seem to be doing that much investing, according to findings from an investigation by the Senate Finance Committee. But Kushner still profits, with Affinity pocketing a 2 percent annual management fee from almost all his investors. “He’s able to get such enormous fees, as an investor with a pretty crummy record who’s just raking in money from sovereign wealth funds in the Gulf, regardless of how well he is shepherding those investments,” said Ryan Carey, chief communications adviser and deputy policy director at the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance.

The fund’s assets under management come almost exclusively from “the very Arab petrostates critical to the agreement and potential reconstruction—Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates,” journalist Mohamad Bazzi wrote in*The Guardian*. These nations have already begun investing in Syria and could be involved in rebuilding efforts in Lebanon, in a bid to exercise more influence in the region.

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AN 2 26

A bombshell Saturday report from the Wall Street Journal revealed that a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family secretly backed a massive $500 million investment into the Trump family’s cryptocurrency venture months before the Trump administration gave the United Arab Emirates access to highly sensitive artificial intelligence chip technology.

According to the Journal’s sources, lieutenants of Abu Dhabi royal Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan signed a deal in early 2025 to buy a 49% stake in World Liberty Financial, the startup founded by members of the Trump family and the family of Trump Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff.

Documents reviewed by the Journal showed that the buyers in the deal agreed to “pay half up front, steering $187 million to Trump family entities,” while “at least $31 million was also slated to flow to entities affiliated with” the Witkoff family.

Weeks after green lighting the investment into the Trump crypto venture, Tahnoon met directly with President Donald Trump and Witkoff in the White House, where he reportedly expressed interest in working with the US on AI-related technology.

Two months after this, the Journal noted, “the administration committed to give the tiny Gulf monarchy access to around 500,000 of the most advanced AI chips a year—enough to build one of the world’s biggest AI data center clusters.”

Tahnoon in the past had tried to get US officials to give the UAE access to the chips, but was rebuffed on concerns that the cutting-edge technology could be passed along to top US geopolitical rival China, wrote the Journal.

Many observers expressed shock at the Journal’s report, with some critics saying that it showed Trump and his associates were engaging in a criminal bribery scheme.

“This was a bribe,” wrote Melanie D’Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health, in a social media post. “UAE royals gave the Trump family $500 million, and Trump, in his presidential capacity, gave them access to tightly guarded American AI chips. The most powerful person on the planet, also happens to be the most shamelessly corrupt.”

Jesse Eisinger, reporter and editor at ProPublica, argued that the Abu Dhabi investment into the Trump cypto firm “should rank among the greatest US scandals ever.”

Democratic strategist David Axelrod also said that the scope of the Trump crypto investment scandal was historic in nature.

“In any other time or presidency, this story... would be an earthquake of a scandal,” he wrote. “The size, scope and implications of it are unprecedented and mind-boggling.”

Tommy Vietor, co-host of “Pod Save America,” struggled to wrap his head around the scale of corruption on display.

“How do you add up the cost of corruption this massive?” he wondered. “It’s not just that Trump is selling advanced AI tech to the highest bidder, national security be damned. Its that he’s tapped that doofus Steve Witkoff as an international emissary so his son Zach Witkoff can mop up bribes.”

Former Rep. Tom Malinkowski (D-NJ) warned the Trump and his associates that they could wind up paying a severe price for their deal with the UAE.

“If a future administration finds that such payments to the Trump family were acts of corruption,” he wrote, “these people could be sanctioned under the Global Magnitsky Act, and the assets in the US could potentially be frozen.”

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One of Donald Trump's top officials working on the effort to broker a peace deal to end the war in Ukraine is thought of as "a gift to the Russians," according to a new report from NBC News, and seems to be in conflict over the situation with Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

The Monday report from NBC detailed the increasingly contentious dynamic between Rubio and Steve Witkoff, a billionaire real estate developer appointed as a "special envoy for peace missions." Among the responsibilities this position entails is helping to negotiate peace between Russia and Ukraine, as the conflict between the two nations nears its fourth anniversary.

Witkoff and Rubio are said to have "sharply different views about how to end the war," as well as about "how much the U.S. should trust Russia’s promises." Witkoff, according to NBC, favors negotiating a deal quickly and putting more pressure on Ukraine to accept Russia's unfavorable demands. This includes withdrawing forces from the Donbas region, which Russia currently occupies and has been attempting to seize control of. Witkoff's desire for expedience is said to be on Trump's orders.

Witkoff's efforts have come under heavy scrutiny for his willingness to take Russia's claims in good faith and push for concessions that favor the Kremlin. Others decried him as an "amateur" in the diplomatic sphere.

“He’s a gift to the Russians,” one anonymous Congressional official told NBC.

Rubion, on the other hand, reportedly favors a more long-term effort, using increased economic pressures to get Russia to accept more Ukraine-friendly concessions, "a view shared by America’s European allies."

“They seem to be singing off of a different sheet of music,” Alexander Vershbow, a former diplomat who served as ambassador to NATO, told NBC. “And if you don’t have a common understanding of the problems and of your adversary in a negotiation, it can’t be good.”

NBC's report further detailed a recent incident in which Witkoff traveled to Switzerland ahead of Rubio to meet with Ukrainian officials, effectively conducting an "end-run around" Rubio and attempting to "beat him to the punch." At the time, Rubio was attending a wedding in which his daughters served as bridesmaids.

"Witkoff did not communicate his travel plans to Rubio and other State Department officials, the three sources said, in what they perceived as a move to allow Witkoff to negotiate with Ukraine in a way he saw fit," NBC's report explained.

"GRIFTING NEPO-BABIES": The next generation of Trump ...}:

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