Steve Witkoff, Trump’s loyalty to disturb diplomacy

Located in the Palace of Elysée, the 303 -year -old seat of the French presidency and a gem of European neoclassical architecture, Steve Witkoff was hit by its resemblance to another famous pile, on the other side of the Atlantic.

“You know what this is? In fact, it looks like President Trump’s club in Mar-Aago,” said the investor billionaire. “He actually works there. It’s like an architect or designer.”

The comment was barely slowing down the laughter of other diplomats around the table. But he also revealed the deep affinity between Witkoff and Trump, two men who reached the age of New York real estate property and have been friends for decades.

Now, to the surprise of experienced observers in Washington and beyond, that friendship has become the engine of U.S. diplomacy.

Trump raised his eyebrows in November by appointing Witkoff, a man with no diplomatic or government experience, as a special envoy to the Middle East. Since then, Witkoff’s responsibilities have only grown up: it has also been responsible for ending the Russia-Ukraine War and to reduce Iran’s nuclear program.

Critics describe him as an innocent abroad, not qualified and without problems in diplomacy. Their fans say the experience is overrated. “The so -called” expert foreign policy “have routinely proved their failures for the last two decades that have not lived up to work,” said Donald Trump Jr, son of the President, at FT. “Steve, on the other hand, is a natural winner who has more talented, grana and common sense than all his combined critics.”

On Friday, Witkoff traveled to Moscow for a meeting With the Russian President Vladimir Putin, his fourth since he assumed the Ukraine dossier. Earlier this week, Trump’s team dismayed to Kiev, presenting a proposal to end the conflict that would see the United States acknowledged in Crimea as Russian while leaving large parts of Eastern Ukraine under Moscow’s control.

“(Is) brazen pro-rus,” said Steven Pifer, a former United States ambassador in Ukraine, now at the Stanford University Security and Cooperation Center. Witkoff has “fallen into a trap,” Pifer added. “Being relatively uninformed about the problems, he grabbed all that a very lovely Vladimir Putin told him.”

Kyiv and his allies have long suspected Witkoff of pro-russian sympathy. They cited an interview he gave to Tucker Carlson last month that he praised Putin as “super smart” and said that the “overwhelming majority” of people in the Ukraine areas partly occupied by Russia “want to be under Russian rule.”

Those close to Witkoff deny that he has taken him. “But if we are in a negotiation and I make a public call without stopping, are you more responsible for making an agreement with me? No, of course, no.”

Born in the Bronx in 1957 to a Jewish family, Witkoff began working for the real estate law firm Dreyer & Taub, then becoming real estate investor.

He found -for the first time in Trump in a New York city in 1986, while the couple worked together. Trump had no cash, so “I ordered a ham and Swiss,” he testified at the Fraud Judgment of former President Manhattan in 2023.

Witkoff was deeply impressed by the property tycoon. “I used to say,” Well, God, I want to be him, I don’t want to be the lawyer, I don’t want to be the science, I want to be that man, “Witkoff told Carlson.

In the late 1990’s, he fulfilled his own dreams like Trump, creating a real estate empire that included the Woolworth building and real estate property in New York in Chicago, Dallas and Philadelphia.

Meanwhile, the friendship of the couple was deepening. Witkoff has spoken publicly about the emotional support Trump provided after his 22 -year -old Andrew died in an oxycontin overdose in 2011. Witkoff paid in kind: it was one of the small bands of associates who remained loyal to the former president after the January 6 revolt on 2021.

This loyalty was rewarded when Trump returned for a second term, and named him special shipping, a role he did quickly. He was essential to negotiate a cessation of fire between Israel and Hamas in January, and scored another great success when he traveled to Moscow to negotiate, which led to the release of the North citizen -American Marc Fogel on an exchange of prisoners.

The observers say that the fact that he enjoys all the confidence of the President -and is one of his closest confidants -gives him a weight that North -Americans had not lacked. “Help Steve is not there for himself,” says an administration official who knows Witkoff well. The envoy, he adds, is not a salary and uses his own private aircraft for diplomatic tasks.

Foreign policy experts say their record has been scarce so far. The Gaza truce that helped negotiate fell in March. And there is no sign of cessation of fire in Ukraine.

But Witkoff’s supporters believe that their great contribution is to have shaken a system that needs a lot of new approaches.

“There is something to say for an outsider who knows how to negotiate and work on these offers,” says Trump’s counselor. “And if you give the foreign policy elite a quick kick to the ass, I think it’s a good thing.”

Additional Reports by Andrew England

guy.chazan@ft.com