Donald Trump has been indebted to Steve Witkoff for nearly 40 years. The current US President met his current chief negotiator for conflicts around the world early in the morning in 1986 in a delicatessen in Manhattan. Witkoff … He was then a junior lawyer at a firm working with Trump on one of those marathon negotiations for a real estate deal. The two had gone to one of those all-night iron-on places, on Thirty-ninth Street. Trump, who became a New York brick-and-mortar sensation, was never without a penny in cash. Witkoff offered him a ham and cheese sandwich.
That was the seed of a friendship that was strengthened years later, when Vitkov left law to follow in his friend’s footsteps, investing in real estate (“I wanted to be like him,” he said this year in an interview with Tucker Carlson).
Now, the deals Witkoff has to make for Trump go far beyond buying a building in Manhattan. It serves as a striking instrument in the most sensitive US negotiations around the world. This is a position that was fraught with controversy. Especially after a leaked phone call with Yuri Ushakov, Vladimir Putin’s right-hand man, to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine. In it, Witkoff took positions that Russia had defended — such as a full ceding of Donetsk province — and advised the Russians on how to persuade Trump.
But Witkoff also achieved resounding successes. The greatest of these was the design of the peace agreement between Israel and Hamas, which made possible, for the time being, a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of the remaining hostages in the hands of the Palestinian terrorist group.
Trump’s reaction to the leak of the call between Witkoff and Ushakov was to say this was “standard” in negotiations. The truth is that there are very few standards in Witkoff’s diplomacy.
Witkoff is said to be one of Trump’s few close friends
Trump has placed at the head of the major international negotiations of his second term – Gaza, Ukraine, and the release of American prisoners – someone with no diplomatic experience, in international relations or in national security. For Trump and his allies, this is the key to their value: doing things differently, to achieve results never seen before.
At the same time, like Trump, Witkoff has been criticized for personal enrichment. One of his sons is one of the heads of World Liberty Financial, the cryptocurrency company of the Trump children, who have done business in the Gulf states in parallel with their parents’ diplomacy.
Witkoff, 68, is a New Yorker like Trump. He was born in the Bronx and raised on the outskirts of Long Island, the son of an Eastern European Jewish family. When he started out in the brick business, he did so modestly, collecting cheap apartment building rents. According to legend, with a gun strapped to his ankle. Thanks to his wisdom and audacity, he ended up becoming a real estate shark.
In the process, he struck up a great friendship with Trump. At work and on the golf course, it is a shared pastime. They say he is one of the few true friends of the US President.
With Trump’s return to the White House, freed from the shackles he suffered from in his first term, the president chose a person with no experience but with all his confidence and sincerity to be his special envoy around the world. This is something that governments of other countries realize: Witkoff will not be a diplomat, but he is a decisive figure. He is the one who can influence Trump. That is why, as we saw in the negotiations with Russia, it must be influenced.