‘Putin’s Lying to Him!’ H.R. McMaster Issues Warning to Trump Peace Envoy Steve Witkoff on Fox News
H.R. McMaster, who served as National Security Adviser to Donald Trump during his first term, took to Fox News on Thursday to warn Steve Witkoff, the president’s special envoy for the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, not to trust Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
In his initial comments, McMaster observed that “what President Trump is encountering is a Vladimir Putin who’s kind of intransigent, right? Who, you know, instead of taking any kind of concession we give is like good faith, and that warms his heart, and he’s going to negotiate in good faith, he just pockets whatever concession he can get.”
“Because I think what we’re all going to realize here pretty soon is what Vladimir Putin wants is non-negotiable. He wants to dominate Ukraine,” he continued. “He does want the Black Sea to be his, and he wants to subvert the transatlantic relationship and break apart NATO. I mean, Putin has these aspirations, Martha, that go far beyond anything in reaction to what we do.”
“So there was a piece in The Wall Street Journal last week, since you brought that up, that suggested that Steve Witkoff, you know, conveyed that Putin does not necessarily want that grand vision that you ascribe to him,” observed anchor Martha MacCallum. “What do you say to that?”
McMaster replied:
Well, I mean, Putin’s lying to him! That shouldn’t come as a surprise to anybody. Putin is the best liar, the best deceiver in the world. Look at the long line of people who he’s deceived, right? The two chancellors in Germany, well, he just bought one of them off, . Gerhard Schröder, and then he duped Angela Merkel for a long, long time, telling her, “Hey, Angela, you can bring me in from the cold.” How about President Macron, right, who thought he could be the Putin whisperer? And then multiple U.S. presidents, Martha, remember President George W. Bush looked into Putin’s soul and saw somebody who cared about his people. And then you had President Obama with the reset button. So, hey, this is just the latest in a long series of Putin’s ability to deceive Western leaders. So I just think, hey, it’s probably time to stop the serial gullibility, recognize who you’re dealing with. What Putin respects, what he responds to, is power. And actually, he won’t stop until he is stopped. The good news for us, I think is: He’s in a position, thanks to his really bad decision-making, you know, the invasion of, of, of-, re-invasion of Ukraine in 2022. You know, he’s broken his economy. And, you know Martha, in the last year, Russia has taken 40 to 45% of the total casualties in the war. That’s not sustainable. So I think we are in a real position of strength, we being the United States and Europe if we come together on this again, and Putin is in a position of weakness. And I think I’d like to see us act more like that, you know, and I think Putin might be more responsive. You know, what did he do when we had, like, the energy infrastructure ceasefire? Well, he attacked energy infrastructure anyway, and then he blew up a kindergarten and a children’s hospital. You know? So I think we have to have a clear-eyed view of who the aggressor is here, and we also have to recognize that, you know, what Putin respects is strength.
Watch above via Fox News.
