he s been pressing on with u.s. secretary janet yellen. the second is energy prices. gas prices remain very high in the united states and the president wants to press energy producers to produce a supply to try to get a handle on that. and the third is iran, iran nuclear deal. this is one of those issues that the president wants to distinguish himself from president trump. he wants to re-enter the iran deal, he s finding that, again, that s easier said than done. he ll be on the sideline with leaders from the united kingdom, germany and france, sort of the e-3 on getting on the same page and going forward. and the u.s. has been back indirectly in talks that have been languishing since may or so, since the innerian presidential election. the iranians say they want to get back together, but there s skepticism in washington what
their purposes are. but the president wants to go from there. and the president wants to show he s back at the table, back talking, but we ll see how that goes. there s, as you said, some skepticism with that. certainly, president biden is viewed a lot more favorably than president trump. but he really needs to put some actions behind those words at the moment. yeah. as you say, the mood very different now than it was for his european tour in june. again, for our viewers, we re seeing various world leaders coming up and being greeted by the italian prime minister mario draghi. ben, looking back on yesterday, biden s two key meetings, i want to start with biden s meeting with the french president emmanuel macron. do you get that the president accepted the disaster with the submarine as they would see it? reporter: i think they would
picture you re seeing next to ben, those are live pictures as the leaders arrive there in rome. so, kevin, turning to president biden, specifically, much. narrative here around this g20 has been around this idea of biden having to heal risks of allies, restore the very idea of american leadership around the world. i mean, that s a huge lift there for him. this is a subject you ve written about. so, how does he go about actually doing that? reporter: well, he starts just by showing up. and the president is, of course, very committed to the idea of multilateralism. his presence at the summit, just the enthusiastic presence here at g20 in rome can go a long way. that s a major contrast to the former president donald trump who is often at these summits somewhat begrudgingly, before the summits, asking his aides whether he has to attend.
kim. all right. and then, kevin, the other big meeting there, biden says with the pope, it was unusually long. what did you make of their meeting and the fact that it apparently touched on the political controversy of biden s very standing as a catholic? reporter: yeah, i think what was striking was the way that meeting sort of spans the political issues and the very personal issues. president biden, of course, very devout catholic, the second catholic american president goes to mass almost every week, once considered joining the priesthood himself. and that really was evident in the meeting with pope francis, and you saw that in the sort of scattered images you saw coming out of their greetings. the president very talkative, very warm with pope francis, this was the fourth time they d met. this was not the first time they met. and the white house saying climate is one of the issues that the pope wants to talk
about, he wanted to stress that the nation needs to do more to help nations cope. covid came up. the president didn t press biden to donate more vaccines but it was discussed, that again, wealthy nations have to help the poor nations to combat the covid but what came out afterwards, the pope told him that he was a good catholic, and he should continue receiving communion. that was a reference to the dustup back in the united states where conservative bishops are pressing to deny american politicians who support abortion rights to women, they want to the deny them communion. and the president said that essentially the pope was on the opposite side of that. very personal, very long. it was 90 minutes, one-on-one. that s much longer than the pope generally meets with foreign leaders. and officials said afterwards, the president talked to them and sort of briefed on it afterwards, they said. but it was just striking how