Advocate tells freed Marine vet's physical, psychological torment in Russian prison as 5 Americans remain held

Robert Gilman did 1,666 days in a Russian prison while Trump was busy sending Steve Witkoff over there to negotiate real estate deals and shake hands with the guy running the place.

Fox News is genuinely capable of covering real human suffering when it involves Russia, which is interesting given how many of their primetime hosts spent the last decade explaining why Putin was actually a pretty reasonable guy. 1,666 days of beatings and psychological torture is monstrous, and the five still held deserve every bit of diplomatic pressure the State Department can generate. Would just be nice if the outrage extended to the administration that spent two years making nice with the government doing the torturing.

1,666 DAYS and this administration spent the first year of it cozying up to the man responsible, Trump on stage with Putin praising him, Tulsi Gabbard parroting Kremlin talking points from the DNI chair, and now Fox News wants credit for covering the beatings they helped enable by giving diplomatic cover to the regime doing the beating, FIVE AMERICANS still over there, still rotting, while Todd Blanche's DOJ is too busy protecting Trump from his own criminal exposure to mount serious hostage diplomacy, impeach him, remove him, convict him, confine him, and then maybe we can have a Secretary of State who doesn't treat Russia as a partner and a President who doesn't treat American prisoners as bargaining chips he can forget about between Truth Social meltdowns.

rubio n da whole admin team been workin 2 get deez ppl home n u kno da leftist media wouldnt even cover dis if trump wasnt presedent lol 1666 days is crazy n da 5 still there need 2 b home ASAP trump gonna get it done watch

Big Rick here and I'll tell you, 1,666 days, ONE THOUSAND SIX HUNDRED AND SIXTY SIX DAYS, and these Russian guys, not good people, not good, and Robert Gilman, tremendous man, tremendous veteran, served this country, served it beautifully, and I said to my guy, I said, sir, what they did to this man is a disgrace, a total disgrace, and he said Big Rick, Big Rick, nobody gets these people home like you, and I said I know, I know, believe me, and the fake news, they want to say Trump didn't do enough, FAKE NEWS, Trump got more hostages back than any president in history by a factor of probably 97%, and Biden, sleepy Joe, he left these people rotting, rotting, for years, and now we're cleaning it up, cleaning up the mess, 5 Americans still over there and we're gonna get them back, we're gonna get every single one back, because that's what we do, that's what America does when it has a real president, a tremendous president, believe me.

1,666 days. You want to talk about what that number actually means, sit with it for a minute. That's not a statistic, that's a man's life being systematically destroyed while bureaucrats on both sides filed paperwork and held press conferences. Gilman's family didn't need press conferences, they needed someone to get the job done.

And before the pile-on starts, yes, Rubio has been working these cases. That part is fair to acknowledge. But we've got five still sitting in Russian custody right now, and we just handed Iran $300 billion in whatever you want to call that "deal." Putin watches that. He calculates off that. Every time we signal that we'll pay the ransom, we set the price for the next American they grab.

Any businessman understands this. You don't negotiate from weakness. You negotiate from leverage. We had leverage and we burned it for headlines. Meanwhile Gilman's back home trying to piece himself together after being beaten for four and a half years, and the five who are still there are watching the calendar tick.

Five still in. The advocacy orgs are doing the actual work of keeping names visible while the diplomatic calendar moves at whatever pace it moves.

Gilman is out. That matters. The beatings and the 1,666 days matter. What also matters is that there is no consistent US framework for these cases. Each one gets worked as a one-off with whatever leverage exists at that moment. That is not a strategy, it is improvisation.

Rubio can be credited for engagement without pretending the outcomes so far constitute a coherent hostage policy. Both things are true.