President Donald Trump is losing confidence that he can get an actual deal from Vladimir Putin at his summit on the Ukraine war in Alaska, BBC News special correspondent Katty Kay told MSNBC's Jason Johnson on Wednesday evening.
"Now, this is a key thing here," said Johnson. "President Trump, after his first term, when he was out of power, he basically hollowed the Republican Party out of any actual experts when it comes to Russia ... the only person in his administration that might understand anything about this is Marco Rubio, who he sidelined."
That being the case, he continued, "Is it possible, despite listening to the Europeans, Trump doesn't even know what ground rules to set, because it's not like he necessarily knows what's at stake. Is he even capable of setting standards with Putin when he's so uninformed?"
"Look, I don't think anyone would say that Donald Trump was fascinated by details of foreign policy or domestic policy necessarily, right?" said Kay. "He wants the win. He wants the deal. He wants the meeting."
"I think it's been really interesting to watch the White House over the last couple of days lower expectations for this," she continued. "Donald Trump went into this, suggesting almost that he had the deal and the Nobel Prize was going to come the next day. That's changed significantly. I mean, we've heard it from Karoline Leavitt. We've heard her saying this is in 'listening mode.' I think there has been a realization that he's going into this meeting and may not come out with the big deal that he had been hoping to get out of it."
The trouble, then, she added, is, "What is the point of the meeting? Does the meeting help the situation in Ukraine, or does the meeting actually hurt the situation in Ukraine? Does Vladimir Putin ... kind of bamboozle him with flattery? And does Trump get back to his natural state, which seems to be an admiration for Vladimir Putin coming out of this meeting?"
This comes as some other experts reach a similar conclusion, with CNN's Kristen Holmes noting that Putin has left Trump "disappointed and embarrassed" and "growing increasingly frustrated" headed into the meeting.
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