"Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth"
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Steve Witkoff goes full Russian propaganda in chat with Putin pal Tucker Carlson
Donald Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff has attracted global ridicule for spewing Kremlin conspiracy theories about Ukraine being a “false country” while lauding war criminal and dictator Vladimir Putin as “super smart and gracious”. In an extensive interview with pro-Russia far right broadcaster Tucker Carlson, Witkoff declared that Putin “was not a bad guy” and “straight up”. Trump’s fumbling fixer praised Putin even though the Russian President made him wait eight hours for their Moscow meeting on March 13 while he entertained Belarusian dictator Aleksander Lukashenko.
During the chat with Carlson, celebrated in Russian state media for its perfect reiteration of treasured Kremlin themes, the multi-millionaire real estate mogul Witkoff made multiple gaffes. Notably, he struggled to correctly name the Ukrainian territories that Russia has illegally annexed since it invaded Crimea in 2014. “I think the largest issue in that conflict are these so-called four regions, Donbas, Crimea… and there’s two others,” he said. “They are Russian-speaking, and there have been referendums where the overwhelming majority of the people have indicated that they want to be under Russian rule.” A Putin-approved newspaper headline responded ecstatically. “US & Russian officials are now speaking the same language…for the first time in years the White House and the Kremlin are openly demonstrating their mutual attraction.”
According to Witkoff there are two sides to the Russian aggression and war on Ukraine. “We need to understand what the true conditions are out there…They’ve been at each other since World War II,” Witkoff intoned. “There’s a sensibility in Russia that Ukraine is a false country, that they just patch together in this sort of mosaic, these regions. And that’s the root cause, in my opinion, of this war, that Russia regards those five regions as rightfully theirs since World War II. And that’s something that nobody wants to talk about. Well, I say it out loud.”
Omitted from Witkoff’s propaganda spiel was the fact that Russification notably via forced speaking of Russian was imposed on Ukraine since Stalin in the 1930s and does not mean these speakers are not Ukrainian. Also ignored by Witkoff: that the referendums were widely identified as shams due to local residents having been forced to leave or vote at gunpoint. Among those who remained were people who were tortured and targeted with death threats by the Russians.
Witkoff parroted the widely debunked claim that these regions had originally been “handed over” to Ukraine by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, whom Carlson incorrectly suggested was Ukrainian. In fact only Crimea was transferred to Ukraine in 1954. The other four regions have been part of Ukraine’s sovereign territory prior to World War II as the Ukrainian Soviet Republic, and even earlier.
Further repeating Kremlin narratives, Witkoff scorned UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s ceasefire negotiations including insistence on independent peacekeeping forces as “a combination of a posture and a pose” with a “simplistic” idea that we “have all got to be like Winston Churchill”. Witkoff waved away concerns that Russia could extend its invasion beyond Ukraine, contradicting Putin’s own rhetoric about reclaiming historic Russian lands. “The idea that the Russians are going to march across Europe is absurd,” he said. “We have NATO, which we didn’t have in World War Two.”
Witkoff falsely asserted that Ukraine had agreed to hold presidential elections, though he provided no evidence for the claim. Ukraine’s constitution currently prohibits elections during wartime, and experts warn that attempting to hold them could make the country vulnerable to Russian interference.
Witkoff claimed Putin told him he had prayed for Trump following last year’s assassination attempt and had even commissioned a portrait of the former president as a gift, which Trump was “clearly touched by.”
On Hamas and Qatar and Iran, Witkoff engaged in open relativization and justification of terrorist actors including saying that Hamas was “not as ideologically extreme as portrayed”. “What we heard in the beginning of this conflict is Hamas is ideological,” he said. “They’re prepared to die for a whole variety of reasons”. Witkoff said he had informed the US President of his views. “I don’t think that they are as ideologically locked in. They’re not ideologically intractable. I don’t. I never believed that, by the way.”
Carlson is a Kremlin mouthpiece who interviewed Putin in 2024 and his war crime denying Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. He has been condemned even by a minority of conservatives and MAGA republicans for inviting Holocaust deniers and Nazi apologists on his show and platforming a variety of antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jews and Israel. In September 2024, Carlson conducted a long podcast with pro-Nazi Darryl Cooper, calling him “the best and most honest popular historian in the United States.”
During their discussion on March 21, Carlson and Witkoff defended the Qataris, the state sponsors of Hamas, along with Iran. “In the case of the Qataris, they’re criticized for not being well-motivated,” Witkoff said. “It’s preposterous. They are well-motivated. They’re good, decent people. What they want is a mediation that’s effective, that gets to a peace goal. And why? Because they’re a small nation and they want to be acknowledged as a peacemaker. And I think the president realizes that, and I realize that”.
Carlson joined in the barracking for Qatar and deplored that it is “almost universally accused in the U.S. media of being agents of Iran.” Again Witkoff agreed.
“It’s preposterous,” he said. “Look, they’re a Muslim nation. In the past, they’ve had some views that are a little bit more radical, from an Islamist standpoint, than they are today, but it’s moderated quite a bit. There’s no doubt that they’re an ally of the United States. There’s no doubt about that”.
However both Witkoff and Carlson could be perceived to have conflicts of interest due to Witkoff’s real estate and financial relationships and deals with the Gulf state. On March 8 Carlson gave a platform to Qatar Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, to defend Iran’s nuclear program. Qatar is a host and sponsor of Hamas whose former government employee Khalid Sheikh Mohammed masterminded the September 11, 2001 attacks on America. The Gulf state also hosts the Islamist terror group the Muslim brotherhood, and finances the Taliban, Hezbollah, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a U.S.-designated terrorist organization.
For sixteen years, Conspiracy Watch has been diligently spreading awareness about the perils of conspiracy theories through real-time monitoring and insightful analyses. To keep our mission alive, we rely on the critical support of our readers.
