Steve Witkoff: Building Mideast ties for Trump

Daily Point

For Mideast, Trump taps another real estate man

Steve Witkoff, a prominent 67-year-old real estate developer, has been selected as president-elect Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Mideast. Raised in Baldwin Harbor and Old Westbury, he has become a close Trump friend and ally over many years.

That personal tie has been on display in the past year. Witkoff is a frequent golf partner of the former president, and was on the course with him Sept. 15 in Florida when the Secret Service shot at a would-be assassin pointing a semiautomatic weapon at Trump from about 400 yards away.

Earlier in the year, Witkoff attended Trump’s Manhattan trial that ended in his felony conviction, for which he has yet to be sentenced. Witkoff, chief executive of his own real estate developing and investing firm, was called by the defense team as an "expert witness" in the state’s previous civil case against the Trump Organization, and testified about the Trump building at 40 Wall St.

Witkoff recalled in court how he met Trump at a Manhattan deli. The future president didn’t have cash on him and Witkoff bought him his ham-and-Swiss sandwich, as the story went. At the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Witkoff recalled how warmly Trump reacted to the death of his son from an opioid overdose.

Witkoff is also a graduate of Hofstra Law School who has served on the university’s board of trustees, and has been active in Jewish causes. As of a decade ago, his Witkoff Group was involved in renovating the Long Island Marriott Hotel and Conference Center in Uniondale.

As Trump once did, Witkoff over the years contributed to a number of Democratic candidates in New York, including Bill de Blasio, Mark Green, and Eliot Spitzer.

Both he and Trump’s nominee for Israel ambassador, Mike Huckabee, have expressed unqualified support for the government and goals of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Witkoff has never dealt with the politics of international relations with the Gaza war, Saudi-Israeli relations, the Lebanon border and Israeli settlements likely to be among the big flash points in years ahead.

Then again, a lack of background in diplomacy or even politics hasn’t stood in the way of Trump’s past appointments on this front.

Jason Greenblatt, who was special Mideast envoy in the first Trump administration, held senior positions at The Trump Organization for more than 20 years. Today, Greenberg’s LinkedIn entry says: "Now connecting businesses throughout the Middle East. Helped Arab nations & Israel achieve peace," a reference to the Abraham Accords.

Trump's son-in-law and former adviser, Jared Kushner, came to the first MAGA White House out of his family’s real estate business. In March, Kushner raised eyebrows with a comment on Gaza — which has seen large-scale destruction with tens of thousands of lives lost following the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas massacre in Israel. "Gaza’s waterfront property, it could be very valuable, if people would focus on building up livelihoods," Kushner said in a news interview dated Feb. 15. He added: "If you think about all the money that’s gone into this tunnel network and into all the munitions, if that would have gone into education or innovation, what could have been done?"

There is no better illustration of how the trusted Witkoff is involved in the personal, business and political aspects of Trump’s life than when Trump met with JD Vance about the vice-presidency. It was Witkoff’s G6 Gulfstream jet that discreetly brought Vance to Mar-a-Lago. The new Mideast envoy is an aide for all seasons.

— Dan Janison dan.janison@newsday.com

Pencil Point

Limping along

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Reference Point

Hot water for a son of Teddy

There are few issues more incendiary than immigration, and that remains true after last week’s conclusion of the 2024 presidential election.

Immigration also was a hot postelection topic in 1956 — and it involved a descendant of the most famous politician in Long Island history.

The backdrop: In 1952, Congress overrode a veto by President Harry S. Truman to pass the controversial McCarran-Walter Act. Among the changes it introduced was a rigid system of immigration quotas based on national origin, heavily tilted toward European countries. In the 1956 presidential election, which saw Dwight D. Eisenhower win a second term, part of his Republican Party’s platform called for "modifications" to the law "in keeping with the traditions of America in providing a haven for oppressed peoples ... flexible enough to conform to changing needs and conditions."

Enter Archibald Roosevelt, son of Teddy Roosevelt, Long Island’s only president. Archibald, as Newsday’s editorial board wrote on Nov. 14, 1956, "has a long and consistent record of being on the wrong side of every issue. He has firmly supported Joe McCarthy and consistently sides with the know-nothings."

Archibald inserted himself into the immigration debate by suggesting that the McCarran-Walter Act be "tightened still further” and not loosened as preferred by Eisenhower and many others.

Archie, as he was known, had a colorful history. He was 6 years old when his father moved into the White House in 1901, and Archie became known for riding his Shetland pony around the grounds. He once "caused a sensation" when he crashed a diplomatic reception by sliding down a banister, according to a 2015 story in the Palm Beach Post. He served with distinction in both World War I and II, suffering wounds and being decorated in both campaigns. When his father died in 1919, it was Archie who telegrammed his siblings that "the old lion is dead."

After World War II, Archie affiliated himself with various right-wing organizations, joined the anticommunist John Birch Society, founded the Veritas Foundation dedicated to exposing socialist influences at American universities, and blamed civil rights problems on "socialist plotters."

Newsday’s 1956 editorial called him the "Black Sheep in the Family" and surmised that Archie’s words on immigration "must have made other bearers of the Roosevelt name shiver."

In testimony before the House Un-American Activities committee, he said opposition to McCarran-Walter was coming only from "hard core Communists, a few bleeding heart Americans and well-meaning people who have been brainwashed," Newsday’s board wrote. "He urged that this country not be made a ‘polyglot boardinghouse’ for immigrants."

Newsday’s castigation was strong.

"Isn’t he a little late?" the board wrote. "The millions and millions of immigrants who have come to our American boardinghouse have helped make the house bigger and better. And their contributions to our table have been far greater than Archie’s."

The board concluded with the hope that the immigration door would be kept open, remarking that "people of Archibald’s ilk can — if they don’t like it — get out."

Archie, who long lived on Turkey Lane in Cold Spring Harbor, died in 1979 and is buried in Oyster Bay. Sixty-eight years and 17 presidential elections after the remarks that drew Newsday’s ire, the debate over immigration rages on.

— Michael Dobie michael.dobie@newsday.com

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