00:00On that point, Mr. Secretary, because on the way here, you said you were seeking an unconditional
00:06acceptance.
00:07I mean, clearly, Mr. Putin is adding a whole series of conditions, and also, the President
00:11says this should be an – Well, how do you know he's adding conditions?
00:14From what he said publicly.
00:15Well, I go back to the point I made.
00:17Let's let this thing play through, okay?
00:19And then let's figure out what – let me at least talk to – let's the team get
00:23together on the state side of this and talk to Ambassador Whitkoff and go through some
00:26of this.
00:27Again, we're not going to be involved in this process where I'm being asked to stake
00:34a position of U.S. policy on the basis of what someone said at a press conference yesterday.
00:39So let's – we're going to work through this thing in a normal, sane fashion.
00:43We'll figure out where we are.
00:45Based on what I know at this moment, with my conversation with Ambassador Whitkoff – he's
00:49not here yet – is we're going to – I feel like there's reason for cautious optimism.
00:54I think the President shared that today in his True Social post.
00:58There's a lot of work.
00:59No, I have never told anybody that this is going to be easy, fast, simple, slam-dunk.
01:03It'll be hard, but it's important work.
01:05We have – we are in a better place today, I hope, I believe – we have reason to believe
01:09– than we were a week ago, but we still have a long ways to go.
01:12It could come together pretty quickly if everyone aligns, but I don't know how aligned we
01:16are yet.
01:17That's what we're going to – about to find out.
01:18So cautious optimism is about the best phraseology I could use at this moment.
01:23Based on what we know, we're going to keep working on it.
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