give vladimir putin the honor of saying, you re my competitor? that is like lebron james telling, you know, a backup high school basketball player, they re on the same level. they re not. what strikes me, the president s campaign slogan is america first, but everything about this summit is america second. everything presents america as the junior partner, in a way. how so? location, to the president s body language, he s awkward and putin is confident, but also the sense that he doesn t want to offend putin. happy to offend anybody. sensibilities have to be respected. this is a president who is not afraid of offending a lot of people in a lot of places, but this relationship, somehow, is more important than all the other relationships we have with all the other countries in the world. it doesn t really add up. why do you think that is? i do not know. i suspect that as the investigation with mueller continues, we will have more facts on the ground to understand the preside
business setting. closing a deal, being the salesman. for vladimir putin, it has always been about careful intelligence gathering. what an opportunity for vladimir putin to do a very up front, close up, personal, psychological assessment of president trump, which is something that a former kgb agent would be skilled and trained to do. in addition to the imbalance here, this is a day trip for president trump, flying in today sorry for president putin and leaving tonight. for president trump, it is the end of what has been a lengthy and, at times, bumpy series of meetings across the u.s. typical allies. then getting to this point, where he comes in with what he d say was the strength of the meetings, making nato stronger and so forth, in the voice of president trump. also, at the end of what has been a tumultuous week. does that play into their private time, having the meeting? the president not a detail person, as you were saying, believes that the larger issues, the force of pers
we are facing right now, with continued russian meddling, they re the same flashing lights we saw in terms of not a cyberattack but a real attack, a physical attack, before 9/11. yet, the president continues to say, yes, the press is interested in answering that. imagine. imagine if he doubled down and shut up and said, bring me the 25 russians who we indicted. imagine if he brought them, jeremy, as you and i said on the broadcast friday night, imagine if the president came to the lectern with both documents from the mueller investigation, the 13 indictments, the 12 indictments, and waved them aloft and said, my counterpart has to answer for these before we can discuss anything further. that s a boss move, brian. instead, we re playing tiddlywink, saying, who is leaning forward? we can only dream, brian. the likelihood of that is obviously nil. look, there was one fact in the indictment that really jumped off the page, which is that on
our system, our way of life, our rule of law has been meddled with in a big way during a presidential election. if we listen carefully to the comments made at this presser, and we hear no comment with regard to meddling, with regard to the indictments of 12 gru intelligence officers, that s deeply troubling. if we hear a comment from the president of russia saying, i want you to know, i want the world to know, we didn t do this, and trump stands by idling and lets that statement go unchallenged in the face of our indictments, that s deeply troubling. if trump comes out and says, i ve discussed it with him. i believe when he says he had no knowledge of this. that, again, is siding with team russia and not with team america. frank, i m so happy you re going to be among those watching this event with us. stephanie ruhle, this really does everyon the playing field between the nations. it does and makes no sense.