By New York Post (Politics) | Created at 2025-03-22 15:21:03 | Updated at 2025-03-23 15:21:31
1 day ago
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.”
Trump came within a quarter inch of death, turning his head just in time so that would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks’ bullet struck his right ear.
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.
