“You talk so much about my president, President Trump, being a humanitarian. You are a humanitarian also, sir, and I salute that, I commend you, and I thank you again.”— Steve Witkoff, U.S. special envoy to the Middle East, addressing Russian President Vladimir Putin
Mark Wednesday, October 21, 2026, as “the day words lost all meaning.” My dictionary just ran outside and threw itself off a bridge. Noah Webster arose from his grave and lurched around, howling and tearing at his hair. Samuel Johnson is bellowing something awful; I can hear it across the Atlantic Ocean. George Orwell is sighing; he has been here before.
I have to imagine that Putin is a little insulted at being so gravely misunderstood. With this single word, humanitarian, our envoy has revealed a stunning ignorance of the Russian president’s life’s work. This is like going to Picasso and praising him as a “representational painter,” or calling the Sahara “the wettest place in the world,” or describing Witkoff’s statement as “unembarrassing.”
I recall watching a video on Youtube (no, I'm not looking it up for you, do it yourself) where a CNN reporter was asking questions of Putin at a press conference and asked him if he saw Russia as an aggressor country. Putin calmy recited all the "facts" of how the US has more weapons, a bigger defence budget and has its army stationed in multiple countries and insisted that in fact it's the US that's aggressive and Russia that's threatened. And the reporter smiled, nodded and thanked him for his important statement.
ReplyDeleteSo it's both sides again. The Left doesn't hate Putin now because he's Putin. They hate him because Trump likes him.