EDITOR’S NOTE (Nick Stamatakis). The evehts of our title were learned during the interview of Steve Witkoff with Tucker Carlson – we published it yeasterday. This is not the first time a Russian president gives a gift to an American President or other officials. But it is certainly the first time a Russian Presient prays for an American Presdient – and we have no reason to doubt he did. The retun to the Christian Orthodox roots of the Russian Nation is at the heart of the Putin tenure. Anyone who has read Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy even in passing knows that without Orthodoxy, Russia as a nation is inconceivable.
But in our case this has deeper symbolic and political significance as both Presidents Putin and Trump follow the same “anti-woke”, conservative policies where religion plays a major role. And the globalist dark forces who oppose both of themk are the ones who promote secularist, anti-christian, anti-nationalist policies. We cannot but rejoice at their personal frendship, whatever that may mean for two leaders of superpowers, and we can only hope tht they will cooperate to overcome these dark glob alist forces and bring peace to humanity.
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Putin went to church and prayed for ‘his friend’ Trump after assassination attempt: Steve Witkoff
Russian strongman Vladimir Putin claims he rushed over to his local church and prayed to God for President Trump’s safety after he was nearly assassinated at a rally in Butler, Pa. rally last July, according to special envoy Steve Witkoff.
Witkoff met with Putin, 72, last week while trying to advance peace talks with Moscow over their brutal war in neighboring Ukraine and the Russian leader described Trump as a personal friend.
“[Putin] told me a story, Tucker, about how when the president was shot, he went to his local church and met with his priest and prayed for the president,” Witkoff told pundit Tucker Carlson during an interview posted Friday.
“Not because he could become the president of the United States, but because he has a friendship with him and he was praying for his friend.”
At the time, a Russian spokesperson suggested that the “atmosphere around candidate Trump” created by his opponents led to the conditions that paved the way for the assassination attempt.
Putin, who is a Russian Orthodox Christian, also gave Witkoff a portrait of Trump to bring back home to the 47th president as the Kremlin seeks to flatter Washington amid delicate deliberations over Ukraine.
“President Putin had commissioned a beautiful portrait of President Trump, from the leading Russian artist, and actually gave it to me and asked me to take it home to President Trump,” Witkoff recounted.
When Witkoff debriefed Trump on Putin’s overtures, the president “was clearly touched by it,” the special envoy recalled.
Flight data had suggested that Witkoff was kept waiting hours before meeting with Putin, though Trump has denied that there was any “wait whatsoever.”
“I don’t regard Putin as a bad guy. That is a complicated situation, that war, and all the ingredients that led up to it,” Witkoff explained to Carlson of the conflict.
Carlson, who interviewed Putin last year, has been a fierce critic of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Kyiv’s endeavor to stave off Russian invaders.
A top agenda item during Witkoff’s meeting with Putin was to help broker a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine.
Earlier this week, Putin and Trump spoke over the phone. Russia rejected the Trump administration’s blueprint for a 30-day ceasefire, something to which Ukraine agreed.
Instead, the Kremlin agreed to pause attacks on “energy and infrastructure” for 30 days. A readout from Moscow stated that Putin demanded the US cease military aid and intelligence sharing to Ukraine, but Trump has publicly denied that claim.
Zelensky later agreed to the scaled-down ceasefire the Russians proposed but warned that “nothing has changed” with the Russians, who launched a massive drone attack on the southern Ukrainian port city of Odesa Thursday.
Trump split from the Biden administration’s policy of steadfastly backing Ukraine and instead attempted to position himself more in the direction of being a neutral mediator between the two warring nations.
One of his top foreign policy priorities has been to end the bloody war in Ukraine, which hit its three-year anniversary last month.
The 47th president has at times heaped praise on Putin, hailing him as a “strong leader” and a “genius,” — though he has also clashed with him as well. Earlier this month Trump threatened to slap additional sanctions and tariffs against Russia.
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Putin gifted a portrait of Trump to the U.S. president
The Kremlin has confirmed that Russian President Vladimir Putin gifted to Donald Trump a portrait he commissioned of the U.S. president
The Kremlin confirmed Monday that Russian President Vladimir Putin gifted Donald Trump a portrait he commissioned of the U.S. president.
Putin gave the painting to Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, in Moscow earlier this month, the Russian president’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said in a response to a journalist’s question, declining further comment.
The gift was first mentioned last week by Witkoff in an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Witkoff told Carlson that Trump “was clearly touched” by the portrait, which he described as “beautiful.”
Witkoff met Putin after talks with Russian officials about trying to end the war in Ukraine. Ceasefire talks continued Monday in Saudi Arabia, where U.S. officials met their Russian counterparts, a day after meeting with Ukrainian negotiators.
During his interview with Carlson, Witkoff described Putin’s gift as “gracious” and recalled how Putin told him he had prayed for Trump last year when he heard the then-candidate for the U.S. presidency had been shot at a rally in Pennsylvania. “He was praying for his friend,” Witkoff said, recounting Putin’s comments.
In 2018, Putin gave then-President Trump a soccer ball that the Secret Service had checked for listening devices before Trump gave it to his son — a precaution that hearkened back to a Soviet-era gift to a U.S. diplomat that turned out to be bugged.
In 1945, a carving of the Great Seal of the United States was given as a gift from Soviet schoolchildren to then-U.S. Ambassador Averell Harriman. It hung in his office for six years, allowing the Soviet Union to eavesdrop on his conversations until the State Department discovered that it contained a covert listening device.
It was not immediately known if the portrait Putin gave to Trump had been examined for bugs. The White House hasn’t commented on the portrait.
Trump isn’t the first sitting president to receive a gift from Putin. In 2021, Putin gave then-President Joe Biden a $12,000 lacquer writing box and pen when they met at a summit in Geneva, Switzerland. In 2013, he reportedly sent then-President Barack Obama porcelain plates and espresso cups.
This apparently isn’t the first portrait of a U.S. leader Putin has sent, either. In 2014, the Russia president reportedly sent to George H.W. Bush a portrait of the former president on his 90th birthday.
Yes. God forbid Trump doesn’t finish the genocide and ethnic cleansing that now both he and United States are fully implicit, if only because we supply Israel with billions of dollars in arms and money and protect them from prosecution.