What are the key takeaways from the Trump-Putin summit?

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00:00Wassim, you've been following this summit from start to finish.

00:03What are the main takeaways?

00:07Yeah, a lot's happening for not much of an outcome.

00:13But this all started with Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin landing at Joint Base Almendorf-Richardson

00:17about 40 minutes apart earlier on Friday.

00:22Donald Trump arriving first, remaining inside Air Force One,

00:25waiting for Vladimir Putin to come in on that Ilyushin-96 aircraft that picked him up

00:30or carried him, rather, flew him away, flew him, rather, from the eastern Russian city of Magadan,

00:36where he made a stopover, and then onward to Anchorage.

00:39And then, of course, the much-awaited moment, the moment that was touted ahead of this summit,

00:44the handshake between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin,

00:47and then an unusual moment of Donald Trump, rather, asking Vladimir Putin,

00:52inviting him into the bulletproof limousine called The Beast, something that is very, very unusual.

00:58And that was really the only moment the two men had face-to-face,

01:02because the initial face-to-face meeting that was initially planned was scrapped in favor of a three-on-three meeting.

01:08Donald Trump flanked by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff,

01:14and then Vladimir Putin with Sergey Lavrov, the foreign minister, and his foreign aide, Yuri Ukashev.

01:21And so that meeting was initially supposed to last just a few, maybe 30 minutes to an hour,

01:27then followed by that bilateral lunch with bilateral discussions with a larger delegation.

01:35But that initial meeting went on for three hours.

01:38The lunch was scrapped.

01:39And then journalists were immediately told to stand by for that press conference,

01:44which really was not much of a press conference, was more of a press statement, just 12 minutes.

01:49Vladimir Putin speaking first, which is quite unusual, given this meeting was held on U.S. soil.

01:55And then, again, as we heard, not much of many announcements, of any announcements being made on the war in Ukraine.

02:02Donald Trump had promised Europeans and Ukrainians that he would be pushing for a ceasefire,

02:07and that he would be willing to walk if Vladimir Putin did not want one.

02:10Now the summit has ended, no ceasefire, Trump did not walk,

02:15and Vladimir Putin has left with being rehabilitated on the international stage.

02:20Now, as even journalists didn't even get to ask questions,

02:23you said this was quite a frustrating summit to be covering.

02:26Can you tell us more about the general atmosphere?

02:28Yeah, again, that press conference wasn't a press conference at all.

02:34It was more of a press statement, one of the most frustrating press conferences I've ever witnessed.

02:39You heard immediately after that statement from both men that, you know,

02:45you heard the clamor from that press corps inside that room.

02:48Of course, that clamor is, you know, par for the course.

02:52They're used to try to raise their voice to ask questions.

02:55But I think much of it was also just natural.

02:58They couldn't believe what they were hearing,

03:00the fact that these two men had brought, you know, hundreds of people,

03:03hundreds of journalists to Alaska and then not even entertain any of those questions.

03:08But that gives you an idea of how surprising it was,

03:11because Donald Trump, although he does have a love-hate relationship with the press,

03:16he loves that sort of interaction, that gesturing, that back and forth with the press.

03:20And so it must have been quite frustrating for him not to have anything to say.

03:24And that gives you an idea of perhaps how little was achieved in those conversations.

03:28Again, we're still waiting to hear what exactly transpired.

03:32Hearing Donald Trump speak, it was almost listening to, I want to say,

03:35a college student trying to hit that word count,

03:38saying, using more and more words to really not deliver on much of anything at all.

03:45All right, Wasim, thank you so much for your coverage of this summit.

03:49We'll let you go.

03:50That's Wasim Cournet, our correspondent reporting there from Anchorage, Alaska.

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