in the small meeting that biden and putin will have at the beginning, they won t be alone. on our side, we ll have secretary blinken, and on their side, they ll have foreign minister lavrov, which means there will be note takers there. remember, trump didn t want any note takers in helsinki so we had no idea, frankly, what they actually agreed to in that meeting. that s a good sign. you always want to have a note taker, so we don t know what the substance is but i think in terms of the design of the meeting, it s a very good set-up for president biden. you know, and we kind of get the idea, having observed vladimir putin over the decades, that he what he wants is to undermine the idea that american democracy and that the system that we have here is the better one and to prove that his system is better. what do we want from a meeting like this? and i think it s also important, it s not being called a summit, that would elevate putin. it s just a meeting. what do we want from our int
there will be a note taker in this meeting between biden and putin. can you think of any good reason to not have note takers present? no, i think for historical purposes there always should be a record of a meeting like this, which is obviously going to be consequential. the question is, will it be the two of them? and phil can talk about this. because he s covering it day-to-day. you know, a small group of aides, just the two of them, a note taker, whatever, i believe there always is somebody. i think look, this is such an important meeting, and it s going to be very different because these men know each other and they have no illusions about how they feel about each other. and jen psaki said last week, well navalny may not be on putin s agenda, but he s going to be on biden s agenda. and i think you can be sure that biden will be direct about that.
those meetings. they would only have a note taker and trump took his notes afterward or only have translarts in the room. we asked the white house who they expect to be in the room when biden and putin meet. they have not told us yet. i think that really speaks to how last palesminute the negotis really are going to be. we expect them to go until the last minute in geneva. we have been told they do expect a smaller session and one bigger session. the smaller session does appear can be a one-on-one between the two leaders. they were one-on-one for quite some time. we know he did want to talk to the turkish leader about putin. we ll likely see how that ends up the day of.
answer, he said, yes, definitely, definitely he does feel america is back, different of course from the interactions with former president trump, but we should switch and note that coming up, of course, the most high stakes meeting of them all is going to be the sit-down with the russian president and the white house confirmed what cnn reported yesterday which is that no joint press conference is going to happen at the end of it. the white house said that is intentional. that was their decision because they think it s a better way for biden to communicate what they talked about, what they agreed on and what they disagreed on from a solo perspective than having putin stand by his side. no takers or aides, trump dismissed that when he met with putin back in the day. has this white house said anything about that, having them present? trump and putin met so many times. we didn t know what was really said in those meetings. some of the president s top aides at the time did not know. tha
president trump embraced putin s denials, but also it s the way he met with him. there was a note taker in the room, but the president wanted the notes after they met. and he didn t want them to talk about what had happened. and of course, when he landed in the united states, he tried to rewrite what had gone on during the summit. i think that s why you ve seen biden be so forceful publicly. and the issues facing the white house, what is the benefit the u.s. gets from having the summit so early in his presidency? there are questions about waiving the sanctions on the company behind the pipeline. there are questions facing the sitdown with putin, and they want this predictable, stable relationship with russia. but we know putin thrives on