The Art of Betrayal
American envoy Steve Witkoff, whose chief qualification for the conduct of diplomacy is his delusion that he is capable of conducting diplomacy, made news yesterday by declaring that Vladimir Putin was “a humanitarian” because Putin had released an American citizen whom his regime had spent the past several years torturing. But an equally absurd howler lay in the context of Witkoff’s remark, which proclaimed not simply that Putin was a humanitarian, but that he was “also” a humanitarian, along with that other great lover of mankind, Donald Trump.
We Americans should be clear about what is happening right now in the skies over Kyiv: An assault on human lives and liberty with the tacit assent of the United States. Our leadership and its corporate supporters have decided, with words and petrodollars and withdrawal of lifesaving support, to help facilitate the destruction of a democratic ally trying desperately to fend off missiles lobbed into civilian neighborhoods by an invading authoritarian force. Our president has not only chosen Putin over Ukraine, but Putinism over the very notion of human freedom.
The president’s men have repeatedly negotiated in bad faith, trumpeting “solutions” that would restrict Ukraine’s capacity to defend itself while requiring essentially nothing from the Putin regime. The just conclusion of the brutal war launched by Vladimir Putin is necessary and will require compromise from all sides, but no workable deal has ever been put on the table. The Trump administration has repeatedly attempted to craft agreements without Ukrainian involvement and has habitually put its thumb on the Russian side of the scale.
But we have now entered into a qualitatively different and much darker phase of American engagement (or pointed strategic disengagement), and the actions of the past week go beyond mere complicity and toward actual participation. The United States cannot be everywhere all at once, but our spineless support of dictatorial aggression is a national shame, a global embarrassment, and a betrayal of our founding principles.
And while these “humanitarians” play games of cynical flattery, humanity pays the price.
– GBM, October 14-22, 2026
