Witkoff Calls Putin “Humanitarian” After Russia Frees Jailed American

Trump administration envoy Steve Witkoff thinks Russian President Vladimir Putin is a “humanitarian.”The comment came after Russia on Wednesday released 74-year-old Stephen James Hubbard, an American who spent four years locked up under accusations of being a Ukrainian mercenary.“He’s a 75-year-old man. You talk so much about my president, President Trump, being a humanitarian,” Witkoff said to Putin. “You are a humanitarian also, sir, and I salute that. I commend you.”Steve Witkoff to Putin: You talk so much about my president, President Trump, being a humanitarian. You are a humanitarian also, sir, and I salute that, I commend you, and I thank you again. https://t.co/Yuf07JkQ2I— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) October 21, 2026 Hubbard was no mercenary, and the Russian president is no humanitarian. In reality, Hubbard was a Michigan native who lived a nomadic lifestyle, entering a relationship with a Ukrainian woman and choosing to stay in the country when the relationship ended. He was arrested by Russia in 2022 and was tortured and starved while in prison.This rhetoric from Witkoff—a former real estate developer who has somehow become the most trusted international diplomat aside from Trump’s own son-in-law, Jared Kushner—was widely panned.“No. Putin is stone cold killer,” Republican Senator John Cornyn wrote, opposing the Trump administration’s fealty to the Kremlin. “Absurd simpering obsequiousness from a representative of the most powerful country on earth, and another American humiliation, to add to the growing, growing list,” Jimmy Rushton of The Kyiv Independent said.Putin is also currently wanted on war crimes by the International Criminal Court, as his war on Ukraine has resulted in the deaths of at least 125,000 Ukrainian soldiers and 15,000 civilians. He has also created a Ukrainian refugee crisis, forcing millions of people to flee their homes since he began his invasion in 2022. Democratic nominee for Congress and former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander was detained by the Israeli military in the occupied West Bank Wednesday morning. “I’ve been detained by the IDF, along with a group of rabbis & volunteers. We were simply harvesting olives in a grove near Nehalim in the West Bank,” Lander posted on X with a picture from a bus showing Israeli soldiers standing at the front. “The occupation is a crime under international law. Harvesting olives isn’t a crime under any law I know.”Lander was among 90 volunteers with Rabbis for Human Rights who were detained near Nahalin, a village close to Bethlehem, while helping Palestinian farmers harvest olives. The group told The Jerusalem Post that the farmers weren’t able to access their groves for three years. According to the Post, Israeli troops arrived two hours after work had started and declared the area a closed military zone. The volunteers agreed to leave the area, but were still detained. The group was mixed between foreign activists and Israeli citizens. Lander posted a video about his trip before he was detained, saying, “Our goals for the trip are to help protect the olive harvest—and to shed a light on the reality of the occupation. To ensure that international solidarity goes beyond the harvest, to become a sustained commitment to protecting Palestinian communities from settler violence, forced displacement, and the ongoing threats to their right to remain on their land.” I'm in the West Bank this week as part of the “Protect the Harvest” coalition along with @israelispeaceny, @ucpinpalestine & Protect the Harvest, which is bringing people together from around the world to help Palestinian farmers harvest olives in the face of state-sanctioned settler terrorism. Our goals for the trip are to help protect the olive harvest — and to shed a light on the reality of the occupation. To ensure that international solidarity goes beyond the harvest, to become a sustained commitment to protecting Palestinian communities from settler violence, forced displacement, and the ongoing threats to their right to remain on their land. And, speedily and in our day, to secure human rights, safety, equality & freedom for both Palestinians and Israelis. Thankfully, our corner of today's harvest was peaceful and successful. But violence unfortunately is never far away. We’ll keep you posted on our efforts this week, especially the stories we hear from Palestinians on the ground. Protect the Harvest.— Brad Lander (@bradlander) October 19, 2026 Lander’s detention comes after Washington Post journalist Heidi Levine was beaten and robbed by Israeli settlers at an olive tree grove in the West Bank last week. U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee issued a rare condemnation of the attack, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed the facts of the “alleged” attack are still under investigation. They have yet to comment on Lander’s detention by Israeli forces. Texas’s five biggest counties smashed voter turnout records on the state’s first day of early voting in the midterm elections.Harris, Dallas, Bexar, Travis, and Tarrant counties all eclipsed early voting records for at least two of the last three elections, Sawyer Hackett, a political strategist, posted on X Tuesday. Some of those records were set during President Donald Trump’s last midterm elections, in 2018.Voter turnout was high in the few counties won by former Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2024 presidential election. In Harris County, the state’s most populous county, more than 104,600 people cast their ballots on Monday. That breaks the previous midterm record set in 2018, when 63,188 votes were cast and Democrats went on to recapture the House.In Dallas County, home to more than two million people, 76,079 voters cast their ballots, eclipsing the 2018 midterm record of 59,389, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins reported.In Bexar County, 42,776 voters cast their ballots on the first day of early voting—the highest first-day turnout for a midterm election or non-presidential election in the county’s history. In Travis County, 40,777 voters cast their ballots, surpassing records from 2022 and 2018, according to the county clerk’s office. Turnout was also high in some counties where Trump was more popular—but that doesn’t mean Republicans have sealed the deal. In Tarrant County, 50,149 voters cast ballots, a 20 percent increase in voter turnout from 2018. Trump previously won Tarrant county by five points in 2024, after President Joe Biden flipped the county in 2020. President Trump bizarrely spoke about being in his third term as president at a White House event on Tuesday.Trump was speaking to reporters at the White House about a new anti-fraud program at the Department of Justice, and as usual, he went off-topic. “So we have now a border that’s as strong as we’ve ever had by far. It’s been that way since the very beginning of my second term, or third term, depending on the way you want to define it, and I don’t want the results of this; I’d like the third term but I don’t want the results of the second term,” Trump said, alluding to the false idea that he should have won the 2020 presidential election but was thwarted by election fraud. Trump; My third term, depending on the way you want to define it. I like the third term, but I don't want the results of the second term. We have the single greatest moment in the history of our country in terms of the economy. Meaning the big economy https://t.co/ZV4GkCwSL0— Headquarters (@HQNewsNow) October 20, 2026 Trump went on to brag more about border security and make false claims about the economy going well, but his mention of a third term is sure to invite speculation about whether he plans to flout the Constitution and try to run for president again. There’s also the fact that he’s repeating false election conspiracies as a pretext to interfere in November’s midterms. Federal officials are seizing voting machines and ballots, trying to grab voter rolls without legal justification, and bringing Democratic states to court based on flimsy evidence. Are all of these attempts at averting massive Republican losses in two weeks Trump’s way of ensuring he can do what he wants as president? So far, Trump’s agenda has only been limited by the courts, with Republicans in Congress reluctant to rein him in on any of his bad decisions, from the Iran war to his whimsical tariffs. He probably sees a GOP-controlled Congress as the only way to keep acting with impunity and avoid any kind of checks on his power, including violating the Constitution. More on this White House event:America’s 80-year-old president is going to get tough on crime, as soon as he finishes his nap.As soon as Donald Trump stopped talking during a White House press conference Tuesday, he dropped his head, fluttered his eyelids, and seemed to power down. The sudden siesta came on the heels of an announcement in which Trump advertised an unprecedented $25 million program that he believed would entice the public to report suspected fraud.Trump stops talking and immediately starts dozing off https://t.co/it9WUvPhzZ— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 20, 2026 “Today I’m thrilled to announce the Fraud Whistleblower Incentive Program. Fraud. Whistleblower. Incentive. Program,” Trump said. “All Americans will now be able to go to the Fraud.gov and report cases of corruption and theft of taxpayer dollars in their communities.“Here’s what we’re going to be doing: Anybody that can prove that he turned somebody in, in other words he or she, if you turn somebody in and you let’s say report, and you find a billion dollars, we are giving a commission to that person of one percent. That’s a lot of money.“And if it’s $10 billion, $200 billion, $400 billion, we’re giving a one percent commission to that person. You have to prove that you were the one and prove that it was you, and I don’t know if you can do this, but subject to the laws of our nation, which I feel very strongly about—if a reporter turns somebody in, you have to get approval. Perhaps from your wonderful newspaper. But if you turn somebody in, you get a one percent commission. You may turn it down, or you may say, ‘I’m not going to be a reporter any longer, this is too easy,’” Trump said.The pitch was, apparently, not enticing enough to keep Trump alert and aware, however. Within minutes, the president appeared to be snoozing, taking a break at the Resolute Desk while Vice President JD Vance spoke in his stead.The first person to receive the president’s award was conservative YouTuber Nick Shirley, who joined Trump and Vance in the Oval Office. Shirley gained national notoriety last year after he published a video that inspired the conservative caucus to politically scapegoat Somali immigrants. In his widely circulated “investigation,” Shirley door-knocked several Somali-run day care centers in Minnesota, arguing that sites that did not respond or allow him—an unannounced, unknown white man—entrance into a center filled with children must have fraudulently accepted federal funding. It would later emerge that elements of Shirley’s piece were incorrect or inadequately reported: At least two of the centers featured in his video had been closed for several years, according to Minnesota’s Department of Children, Youth and Families. The government had also already investigated federal fraud in Minnesota during the Biden administration. More than 90 Minnesotans were charged at the time, and at least 60 were convicted.Nonetheless, Shirley will receive $10,000 from the Trump administration, according to Fox News.Read more about the press conference: