Wikipedia Deep Dive
Steve Witkoff
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**Steve Witkoff Essay** (~3,400 words, ~17 min read)
The essay transforms the Wikipedia article into a narrative that:
1. **Opens with a hook** - The Moscow meeting without an interpreter, highlighting the drama of an untrained diplomat negotiating with Putin
2. **Traces his journey** - From Bronx origins through law school to real estate empire, including the founding of Stellar Management and the Witkoff Group
3. **Covers the trophy properties** - Daily News Building, Park Lane Hotel, Woolworth Building, with architectural and historical context
4. **Explains the Trump connection** - The 1986 meeting, decades of friendship, the assassination attempt he witnessed, and the path to diplomatic appointment
5. **Details the Gaza ceasefire** - The bipartisan cooperation with Brett McGurk, the pressure on Netanyahu, the eventual collapse of the agreement
6. **Analyzes the Putin channel** - The praise for Putin, the problematic Tucker Carlson interview, the interpreter problem, and the consequential misunderstanding about territorial withdrawal
7. **Raises conflict of interest questions** - Qatari funding, family members soliciting investments from governments he was negotiating with
8. **Concludes philosophically** - Examining the "real estate theory of diplomacy" and the portrait Putin gave him as a symbol of the tensions in his approach
The essay is optimized for Speechify with varied sentence and paragraph lengths, spelled-out concepts, and narrative flow rather than encyclopedic listing.