have the united states and russia at loggerheads, ostensibly, talking about each other but not with each other. for her to say that many times before indeed about herself when she was meeting with president trump earlier this year. she said it s much better to be talking to each other than about each other. i think she gets support there. she ll get support for managing to get a fairly solid communique out from here, a communique that is strong on trade, against protectionism, for free trade, against unfair trade he said. but this really is a position that leaves president trump s position somewhat on the outside through angela merkel and other people s definition, they see the united states as sort of the america first as protectionist, the same on globalization. she was saying she was very, very critical of the position of the united states and very taking a lot of effort, we understand, to try and find inclusive language for the final communique between these 20
trump s much-anticipated meeting with president vladimir putin. the russian foreign minister, sergey lavrov, said that donald trump heard and, quote, accepts put putin s very clear statements that russia did not interfere in the u.s. election. is that true? okay. so i think we need to all step back and just look at what we wanted to have happen. we got two very important leaders together and said, okay, it s time for them to meet. this was long time coming. what we know is when president trump meets with a leader things do start to move so from my standpoint and a lot of the administration it was important. what he did but bring up right away the election meddling and e did that for a rp. one, he wanted him to basically look him in the eye, let him know that, yes, we know you meddled in our elections, yes, we know you di it and cut it out. and i think president putin did exactly what we thought he would do, which is deny it. this is russia trying to save face. and they can t. they ca
and so forth. so it seems to me that we will be able to build future relations on the kind of meeting that we had yesterday and we will be able to actually get to the level that we so president putin of russia making some very positive remarks about donald trump. and looking forward to the prospect that thee two leaders doing deals, i suppose, in the future. fredricka? and so overall, how is moscow reacting to that? i think in terms of the reactions that first face-to-face meeting, the reaction amongst russian lawmakers has been euphoric. one said the results of the meeting surpassed expectations and were, quote, a psychological breakthrough. expectations in fairness have been very low, before the meeting took place the russians
russians to have the last word. right. opened the possibility that president trump has decided that russian intervention didn t matter because it helped him politically and that now he expects the russians not to intervene because he s president. and that i hope is not his view. but he s left that open to interpretation. so michael, would it have made a difference if not for the handshake at the very beginning, because remember, you know, it was a matter of maybe the u.s. kind of settling the score, did you meddle or not and if you did, then why, why would you start it off with a handshake, but perhaps if the handshake came at the end, you know, might it be interpreted differently that they, you know, came to terms or they re in agreement but made or there is some consequence that comes from the president of the united states initiating the conversation about meddling? i m actually less concerned about handshakes and eye rolls and sort of the physical optics of two world leader
fiona hill, the lead expert on donald trump s national security council, notably she was not in the meeting with rex tillerson and the president and she should have been because one of the important insights in her book is putin by his own admission, what he was good at as a kgb case officers those who run spies, cultivate agents and assets and people to work for the russian government is what s known as working with people. putin describes himself as a people person. that has a different connotation in kgb speak than it does in the western imagination. that means putin is ademocrat at getting a read of hi interlocutor, in this case a man who is frightfully sensitive and narcissistic and i would hazard to say megalomaniacal and desperate for approval and flattery and pew tip is adept at breaking them down psychologically and building them back up again in his image. very flattering word. very flattering. you couldn t put a better kind of instance of trolling by the