'I'm sorry': Ex-Pentagon official snaps Trump ally's defense of 'out-of-his-depth' envoy
A former Pentagon spokeswoman knocked down a defense of President Donald Trump's special envoy as he attempts to negotiate an end to Russia's bloody invasion of Ukraine.
The president defended special envoy Steve Witkoff, a longtime friend from the New York real estate world, after a leaked recording appeared to show him coaching a Russian official on how to appeal to Trump, and a former member of his transition team downplayed the matter.
"President Trump ran this election saying he was going to, you know, try to bring peace as quickly as possible," Lanza said. "It's turned out to be a little bit more difficult. He's employed somebody as a long-term relationship with to show the Russians how serious he takes these negotiations, and it's sloppy. Diplomacy is sloppy. Before we got the agreement with that, you had in the Middle East, you had multiple potential agreements that just that sputtered and didn't end up anywhere. The fact is, is this administration, this president, is putting focus on trying to bring a resolution to the mass killing that's taking place."
"Nitpicking doesn't matter because at the end of the day, the results are going to be what the results are," Lanza added.
Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright argued that Trump was elevating Putin by holding unilateral meetings with him and granting concessions to Russia despite their aggression, but Lanza disagreed.
"How do you resolve it without talking to the Russians?" Lanza said. "Guys, he is sanctioning Russian companies left and right, and Russian individuals. That doesn't feel like a concessions to me."
Sabrina Singh, a Pentagon deputy press secretary under former President Joe Biden, heard enough.
"I'm sorry," she interrupted. "You do not give in and allow the country that was invaded to give concessions to that aggressor, and I think what's important here is what the transcript showed from that Bloomberg reporting is Steve Witkoff is so out of his depth that he's, I mean, people spend years studying how to approach the approach the Russians and negotiate with them. Putin is a master manipulator, someone that ran, you know, the highest level of the intel service."
"He ran circles around Obama and Biden," Lanza interjected. "You're right."
"Well, he's being able to manipulate Witkoff, I think," Singh fired back, "as well as his own puppet, and frankly, Donald Trump, I mean, look at the red carpet that we rolled out for this on the world stage, like he's giving Putin an audience and attention, and that's what he lives for. It's almost like we're empowering him."
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