President Donald Trump wants to be a peacemaker. He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in the past, yet he has not yet won this coveted award. Since returning to office, he has been redoubling his efforts to solve international conflicts and to strengthen America.

“They will never give me a Nobel Peace Prize,” the president told reporters on February 4 while meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “It’s too bad. I deserve it, but they will never give it to me.”

Despite his feigned exasperation in that exchange, evidently President Trump is still actively striving to become a world-famous peacemaker and unifier. Facilitating peace between Hamas and Israel, or Russia and Ukraine, or Armenia and Azerbaijan, or nuclear-armed nations, or Nicolas Maduro and Venezuelans could win someone the prize and a place in the history books—and Trump has weighed in on all these issues. Yet he has been unable to solve them. His efforts to become a “peacemaker and unifier” are hampered by a fatal flaw.

President Trump is naively placing his trust in men—even madmen like Russian President Vladimir Putin and those who lead Hamas.

President Trump is a courageous fighter against those who attack him openly, but he is very susceptible to manipulation and flattery. This is a dangerous weakness.

The Prophet Isaiah foretold that a class of people would arise in end-time America who would “say to the seers, See not; and to the prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits” (Isaiah 30:10). This prophecy is coming to pass as President Trump’s new foreign-policy team addresses extremely deadly foreign-policy situations with the attitude that, as the president’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, put it, “Anything can be solved with dialogue.”

Deadly Naiveté

Even before President Trump took office on January 20, he sent Witkoff, a longtime friend, to Israel to pressure Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into releasing 1,904 Palestinian prisoners in return for a ceasefire with Hamas. At the time, my father, Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry, wrote “President Trump Betrayed Israel.” Time has already proved this assessment correct. Hamas broke the terms of the ceasefire deal, and the terrorists Israel released are undoubtedly going to kill more people.

Witkoff admitted during an interview with Shannon Bream on Fox News Sunday that he may have been “duped” by Hamas in peace negotiations. Still, he takes Vladimir Putin “at his word.” He shouldn’t be so sure about that.

Steve Witkoff is a Jewish-American real-estate investor, lawyer and diplomat who has been friends with Donald Trump since the 1980s. Trump personally selected him to take the lead in U.S. peace negotiations not only with Hamas and Israel but also with Russia, Ukraine and other nations. President Trump chose Witkoff because he knows he can count on his personal loyalty. This is understandable, since Trump has been repeatedly betrayed over his political career.

Just because someone is loyal, however, does not mean he is competent or effective in dealing with bloody quagmires that have lasted for years, decades or generations.

This flaw in President Trump’s foreign policy was showcased in a revealing March 21 interview Witkoff gave to Tucker Carlson. Listen to the 88-minute interview, and it is evident that he knows nothing about the regions where he is trying to engineer peace. None of his comments ring with any moral clarity: He didn’t talk about good and evil, right and wrong. Rather, Witkoff espoused a utopian belief that everyone he talks to is a great guy and genuine peacemaker.

Regarding peace initiatives with the Islamist regime in Iran, Witkoff told Carlson that the president wants to avoid war and hopes to establish a program that verifies that the Iranians are using nuclear energy only for peaceful purposes.

“I think the president has acknowledged that he’s open to an opportunity to clean it all up with Iran, where they come back to the world and be a great nation once again and not have to be sanctioned and being able to grow their economy,” Witkoff told Carlson.

“I think anything can be solved with dialogue by clearing up misconception and miscommunication and disconnects between people,” he said. “I believe that, by the way. And the president is a president who doesn’t want to go to war, and he’ll use military action to stop a war. That’s when he actually wants to use military action. In this particular case, hopefully it won’t be necessary. Hopefully, we can do it at the negotiating table.”

“Anything can be solved with dialogue” is the underlying theme of Witkoff’s worldview. In other words, he is treating negotiations with the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism like a real-​estate transaction in the Bronx. He thinks that as long as compromise is reached, all parties will walk away happy.

That approach might work in certain business environments, but it does not work in international relations. The Iranians do not want nuclear energy to supply electricity to homes and businesses. They want nuclear energy—badly enough to repeatedly clash with the world’s most powerful nations, badly enough to endure sanctions and other coercions—because they want nuclear bombs. Their leaders preach a particularly radical strain of Shia “Twelverism,” claiming that an Islamic messiah will arrive in the midst of an apocalyptic war to enforce justice on the world by subjecting it entirely to Shiite Islam. They believe that if they start an apocalyptic war, they will hasten this mahdi’s arrival.

You cannot negotiate with such a twisted mindset! Witkoff is no expert on Islamic extremism, and he knows little about human nature. He just wants everyone to sing “Kumbaya” and get along.

Utopian Fantasy

As students of geopolitics know, including those of us who studied International Relations with the late Trumpet staff writer Ron Fraser, there are two broad theories of political thought: realism and utopianism. A realist accepts the biblical truth that human nature is evil (Jeremiah 17:9). A utopian believes that human nature is basically good.

America’s founders were realists. They understood human nature, so they sought to devise a system of checks and balances that would keep power out of the hands of a single branch of government or, worse, a single tyrant.

The world’s socialist movements, on the other hand, are rooted in utopian thought. Generally they believe that 99 percent of humanity is basically good yet is restrained by a corrupt upper class. They reason that if the 99 percent can overthrow their oppressors, then out of their innate goodness they can establish a government that will abolish poverty, racism, sexism, war and other evils.

But to deny humanity’s evil nature is to deny reality. And it makes our dangerous problems worse.

The Trump administration is politically conservative regarding economics and certain domestic politics. But it has a strong liberal streak regarding foreign policy. This is not just a blind spot concerning Hamas and Iran. When you listen to Witkoff’s interview with Carlson, you see that he has a utopian view of human nature. He thinks most of America’s adversaries are misunderstood people who just want someone to listen to them.

Witkoff told Carlson that he found Vladimir Putin to be a “super smart guy” and that he was not worried about Putin manipulating him in the least bit. He told a heartwarming story about how Putin prayed for Donald Trump after the assassination attempt in July 2024, not because Trump was a president but because Trump was a friend. He dogmatically stated his belief that Russia should control Crimea, Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia, and that Putin just needed help getting Ukraine to raise the white flag in these regions. In other words, Witkoff trusts that Putin genuinely wants peace.

This assessment is the exact opposite of my father’s assessment. “Putin is an evil, ruthless, vindictive agent with Soviet-style methods of psychological warfare, assassination and war,” he wrote in our April Trumpet issue. “He has disgusting and devastating policies that are sick to the core and even satanic! I have been saying for years that Putin fills a critical role in Bible prophecy.”

Putin’s actions in the Ukraine war and even to many of his own countrymen are horrific and barbaric. These are not the actions of a genuine peacemaker. And that is to say nothing of the Bible referring to Vladimir Putin as the “prince of Rosh” and prophesying of a time when his army will dash the heads of children against stones (Ezekiel 38; Psalm 137). But leaders like Steve Witkoff are sick in their reasoning and are faint of heart (Isaiah 1:5). When they see something fearsome, they are afraid to face it! They would rather hear “smooth things” and “deceits” than take a hard look at the dangers facing America.

Vladimir Putin does not want peace in Ukraine. He once called the collapse of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century” and is working hard to revive that evil empire, as Ronald Reagan rightly called it. If President Trump does not realize this, he will be duped by Russia like he was duped by Hamas.

No Hope in Man

President Trump optimistically believes America is on the cusp of a new golden age largely because he believes in his own skills as a dealmaker and in the good intentions of other world leaders. The Bible has a different view.

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” states Jeremiah 17:9.

This means we are not basically good people. My booklet Human Nature: What Is It? describes the way humanity acquired an evil nature from Satan. From early infancy, human beings become increasingly tuned in to his influence of selfishness, of grasping power, of dominating, taking, even killing. We have to recognize our own evil nature in order to fight it. When we refuse to recognize this nature, we let our worst impulses run unchecked and end up making huge miscalculations in our dealings with others.

“Our educational system looks upon man as being basically good and trustworthy,” my father writes in Jeremiah and the Greatest Vision in the Bible. “That philosophy destroys institutions and nations! We must see the evil in human nature or we will never solve our problems. That is where man’s false hope lies—in an incredibly deceitful mind that is terminally ill! Here is where men generally place their trust. What deadly deceit! Jeremiah 17 teaches the fundamental lesson about our human minds.”

The statement that “anything can be solved with dialogue” is simply false. Satan also directly influences and manipulates world events through human leaders, and sometimes he has to be fought with overwhelming force.

In his April Trumpet article “Does Donald Trump Know the Way to Peace?”, my father described how human leaders can become possessed by evil spirits, even Satan in extreme cases. He wrote that certain leaders of great powers in history “no longer had the minds of human beings. They had the hearts of wild, raving beasts! That is why these empires are called beasts: They were ruled by men who took on the mind of a beast! There is a crucial spiritual dimension to their transformation. These men who became so brutal had given themselves over to an evil spirit. Such beastly thinking is inspired by Satan the devil!”

These beast-like leaders include the heads of Hamas, Iran and Russia. So when Witkoff sits down with Putin or gets in touch with Hamas, this is the type of people he is dealing with. If he believes he is negotiating with good people who want peace as much as he does, he is definitely going to fall prey to the devil’s devices (2 Corinthians 2:11).

“These dreadful beasts conquer and enslave entire nations,” my father continued. “That is what these beasts do. But modern America likes to think of them as harmless wild animals. Our Israelite nations think like that because of their broken wills. They fear to face the extremely unpleasant truth. It is only a matter of time until they wake up to the harsh reality. … President Trump does not see these powers for the beasts they are. This is a deadly weakness.”

God’s prophet has the responsibility of warning America’s leaders of the dangers that surround them and point them to God. This responsibility is harder when the president is surrounded by advisers who speak smooth things and prophesy deceits. Dialogue will not bring about world peace. Only genuine repentance and the courage to face what is coming head on will save nations—or individuals. We must take a realistic look at the world around us before it’s too late!