Fiona Hill

And so for them, he's the guy to deal with.

I mean, as Steve Witkoff and Trump as real estate moguls, they'd go to the guy who was in charge and then get their guys on lower levels to deal with things from there.

And I mean, it's really the kind of power that Trump has.

I remember in Trump 1.0, the former US ambassador to Hungary, who was a good friend of Trump's.

He was a jeweler from New York and, you know, known him for many, many, many years.

And he was talking about Viktor Orban.

And in fact, I think it was an interview in The Atlantic, of all things, in which he said, this is what Trump wants, it's what Donald Trump wants.

He wants to be that kind of leader.

And in many respects, that means that's what Putin's got on him, because he knows that Trump needs his respect, his validation.

And I saw that over and over again in Trump 1.0, where Trump would want to call Putin because Putin had said something nice about him on international television.

Or, you know, he'd want to talk directly to him.

And of course, those discussions are mediated for Trump.

And for Witkoff as well, they don't speak Russian.

So it's always through a translator.

They hear what's being presented to them.

They don't get the sense of the man and how he's making fun of them and, you know, what he really thinks.

You know, so this is always problematic.

They see what they want to see, which is their own validation in Vladimir Putin.

And Vladimir Putin sees that and he just gives them what they want.

Of course.