details. what s going on? we ve never heard publicly from north korea that it was willing to go forward with the talks after the south koreans extended an offer from kim jong-un to president trump to meet and president trump accepted. we ve been waiting to hear something. now cnn that is learned multiple officials tell myself and cnn that the u.s. and north korea have been meeting. this is being run by the cia, director mike pompeii i don t, the lower-levels if ishil have been speaking on the moment, even met in a third country, initially starting to prepare with these talks, starting with nailing down a location. thenoicance have ask for pong yang, but the capital of
president trump will be happy to make statements himself. let s talk about this with josh rogen and deputy editor of the weakly standard kelly. a senior trump administration official told cnn the president did not accept it. this seems like it would be quick and easy and clear and done. why won t the administration just answer the question on the record? well, i think the reason is because they don t know what happened inside that meeting. the only people who are in there were president trump and secretary of state rex tillerson. the new york times reported this morning that rex tillerson told a close associate, quote, the president said to putin, quote, i want to get this out of the way, did you do this? and tillerson was stunned by that. the bottom line who knows? steve mnuchin doesn t know what was said in that meeting and we
russian meddling in the election and boom, this is what president trump, according to the secretary of state, does, out of the gate. what was vladimir putin thinking? i mean t first thing you ve got to remember is that vladimir putin is, without doubt, the most geopolitically experienced world leader around. and we re comparing this to trump, somebody who is, if we re going to be charitable, a novice at this game. vladimir putin has met the last three generations of western leaders. he met ronald reagan in his retirement, in his role as deputy mayor of st. petersburg in the 1990s. he met margaret thatcher. he s obviously met both clintons. he s met barack obama, so intense experience here. so this is a situation that putin will be incredibly comfortable in. whereas, trump will be perhaps somewhat out of his depth. now, let s compare mr. tillerson to sergey lavrov.
the atmosphere in washington is not good for improvement in u.s.-russian relations, that there is a great deal of suspicion in congress and even within president trump s republican party. they know they have an uphill battle there to try to further improve relations between these two governments. good background for us there. thank you so much, ivan watson. white house advisers are not offering really any clarity on whether president trump accepted russian president putin s denial of interference in the 2016 election. president trump has not spoken about the different accounts of his meeting with the president of russia. here is what his treasury secretary said about this responding to a question from a reporter aboard air force one. reporter: another country making a statement about the president of the united states, do you not want to respond to that and correct the record if it is wrong? i will not make comments about what other people say.
longer than expected. we clocked it at 2 hours, 16 minutes. secretary tillerson says the bulk of that was actually on syria. the two sides reaching an agreement on a cease-fire in syria s southwest. president trump and president putin talked to reporters just before their formal sit-down. thank you very much. we appreciate it. president putin and i have been discussing various things, and i think it s going very well. we ve had some very, very good talks. wear goi we re going to have a talk now, and obviously that will continue. but we look forward to a lot of very positive things happening for russia, for the united states, and for everybody concerned. and it s an honor to be with you. let s first go to our senior white house correspondent who s traveling and covering president trump. jeff zeleny, the headline, obviously, what secretary tillerson says president trump addressed off the top. tell me what else.