“Listening exercise”: U.S. lowers expectations for Trump/Putin summit

The White House and State Department today sought to lower expectations for the summit between US President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday, to a “listening” exercise and not a “negotiation.”

But the point of lowering expectations from the Trump administration’s perspective may be to exceed them.

“I would feel quite confident saying that there won’t be a meeting unless there’s something substantive to agree to at this point,” Russia expert Thomas Graham said on a Council on Foreign Relations virtual meeting August 7.

‘Listening exercise’

“I think it’s a feel-out meeting, to be honest,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio characterized the forthcoming summit in an interview with New York broadcaster Sid Rosenberg.

“The President talked to Putin on the phone…four times...and nothing has come out of it,” Rubio continued. “Or at least we haven’t gotten to where we want to be. And so the President feels like… I want to look this guy in the eye. And that’s what the President wants to do.”

“So honestly, I think we’re going to know very early in that meeting whether this thing has any chance of success or not,” he said.

“It’s hard to do that on the phone,” Rubio said. “This war means a lot to Putin. … The last month…I think in July they lost 60,000 Russians. Not lost like missing in action—like dead.”

US: Putin requested the summit

Both the White House and State Department spokespeople noted from their respective podia that the summit is being held at Putin’s request.

“The meeting came about because the President of Russia asked the President of the United States to meet,” White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told journalists at the White House press briefing today (Aug. 12). “And so the President is agreeing to this meeting at the request of Pres. Putin.”

“The goal of this meeting is for the president to walk away with a better understanding of how we can end this war,” Leavitt said.

“This is a listening exercise for the President,” she added. Trump “hopes in the future there can be a trilateral meeting with these there leaders to finally bring this conflict to an end.”

“It was Putin who suggested this meeting,” State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce told journalists at the department briefing today. “The President is viewing this as… something that was fact finding.”

“The President is not calling this a