hat's one of the biggest problems in the world coming at you, which is AI persuasion.

All right, let's talk about the biggest story. I think everybody is streamed in here now. We got a full house. Putin and Trump met in Alaska because it's sort of right in the middle there. And Alaska of course has some historical value because it is a time when the US and Russia played well together. So in terms of setting the table, as Trump likes to say, is a good persuasion to bring Putin and Trump into the one place that's maybe the most famous place in the world where Russia and the US have gotten along well and they made a deal and it was just business and they were on our side for some stuff and we were on their side for some stuff. Yeah, it's perfect. Whoever came up with the idea of Alaska, that was a home run. That was just a home run. So good job on that.

We'll just run down the list of things that people talked about with this meeting. First of all, the body language looked very positive, as in both leaders did not seem to be acting when they were acting positively toward each other. Their smiles looked real. Their body language seemed to be I'm totally into this meeting and it wasn't creepy. I mean, it wasn't that good, but it was really good. And I don't think any of that was acting. Could have been, but it really looked genuine to me.

Trump of course tried to give Putin the Trump handshake and it was a great buildup to it because Trump stood in one place and made Putin do this long walk down the red carpet to him. So it also made it look like Putin is the one who came to him. That's good. Very good persuasion. But Trump puts out his hand for the handshake and he does the classic Trump thing, which is easy for him to do because he's so much bigger than Putin, where he grabs his hand and then he pulls him in. So that Trump's entire body, that Putin's entire body is immediately controlled by Trump because he doesn't want to have his hand sticking out too far. That would be awkward. So he kind of follows his hand as Trump pulls in close to his body and it puts Trump immediately in command of Putin's body. He makes Putin come to where he wants him to come. He makes him walk the way he wants him to walk on the red carpet. And then when he gets within a hand's distance, he moves him specifically where he wants. And then he says, you know, follow me basically. And he makes Putin do what he wants him to do, which is go wherever they're going. Now, obviously, as the host, it's not surprising that Trump was leading the way, but everything about that put Trump in control. He's taller, he's sort of more popular. He's more of a star. Just everything. So in terms of the setup, the choice of locations and all that, just perfect.

Now I suspect that the traditional media since they don't deal on the persuasion level and they have a meager understanding of how negotiation works at this high level, they're going to say stuff like, well, he just made a star out of Putin. We'll talk about that. But if you were to look at it purely from a setting the table, which is the phrase that Trump actually used, he wasn't trying to get an agreement today. He said he was setting the table. Everything I just mentioned is setting the table.

So what else happened? Weirdly, and I'd love to know more about this, when Putin and Trump first met and then they were doing a long walk together down the red carpet, it appears that they were chatting and joking and that they knew what the other was saying and there was no interpreter there. So I saw Jack Posobiec say that it must have been Putin was trying to speak a little bit of English, but he doesn't do that in public on camera. So it makes me wonder how much English Putin actually knows. And then I've got a second observation. Just hold this in your mind for a moment. What do you think would be the state of relations between the US and Russia if we were dealing with a leader that spoke perfect English? Think about it. I feel as if that language barrier just sort of prevents you from ever having a really good deal.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong. Modi in India speaks perfect English. Right? Can you give me a confirmation on that? I think so. Right. Which and then it's no surprise that India and the US get along great. And then you've got President Xi and we've got kind of a tense adversarial relationship and he doesn't speak English. Now I'm not saying everybody should speak English because English is awesome. But imagine how different things would be if they all spoke perfect English. Is there anybody who speaks perfect English who is an enemy of the US? All right, there's a good test for you. Who is an enemy of the US who also speaks perfect English? There might be some Hamas leader in that category. That's a special case because that's a religious kind of a problem. But you know, North Korea doesn't speak English. It feels to me that if something happened to Putin and he were replaced by somebody who spoke really good English, like Lavrov or one of those guys, I feel like everything would change. It just feels like everything would be different almost immediately. And we wouldn't know why. We would assume it's because, oh, this new leader in Russia, hypothetically, is just saying the right things. Well, maybe. Or maybe it's just that if everybody's speaking the same language, they come to an understanding more naturally. I believe that's true.

Well, let's see what else is happening. So Putin said, "Next time maybe in Moscow." He said it in front of the cameras. So Trump was on the spot and Trump goes, "Oo, that's an interesting one. I don't know. I'll get a little heat on that one. I can see it possibly happening. Thank you very much, Vladimir." So that was clever of Putin because he was the one who came to Trump and Trump had all the setup just right. So Putin was probably thinking, because he's smart, that if he could get Trump to agree to go to Moscow, it would somehow erase this little level difference that Trump had just introduced with his setup of the Alaska visit. And then Putin says it in front of witnesses so that Trump has to react to it immediately. And he wasn't really going to say, "No, I'll never come to Moscow." So he sort of had to give it a maybe, didn't he? And Trump gave it a maybe. And that elevated Putin back up to, "Oh, we must be roughly peers because I go to you, you go to me. You just haven't come yet."

A lot of chat has been happening over the fact that Trump also organized a flyover of the B-2 bomber and its escort jets which is pretty impressive. They timed it perfectly so it came over just as Putin and Trump were getting together and it was an impressive show of force. I wouldn't make as much a deal about it as some of the observers are who are happy that they found the persuasion lesson. That one is so obvious that I don't know if it's really persuasive. I mean, not a lot. Because Russia has big weapons too. So and it's so heavy-handed. You know, it's so obvious that that was to influence him that probably didn't have quite the impact you imagine.

Anyway, I guess the press was kind of adversarial as it often is and was rudely yelling at the two leaders when they got together. And there was some opinion that Putin was kind of put off with it. And at one point they said he said enough. And then he and Trump had a laugh about how bad the press is, blah blah blah. So that was just an interesting moment.

Let me give you some other impressions from other people. Speaking of Jack Posobiec, he said that Trump after the meeting, Trump had been traveling for 19 hours. Does that include both directions? I don't know. And that he was making phone calls until 2:00 a.m. with the other leaders to catch them up. I'll tell you, having a president who doesn't need much sleep is really underrated. It really is like having two presidents. He just doesn't sleep that much. It's kind of amazing.

Well, I guess Zelensky is going to come to the White House on Monday, so he'll be brought into it. And then there's some about Trump saying that everybody determined that the best way to end the war is to go directly to a peace agreement and skip the ceasefire. Does that sound like something they really all agreed on? Because it seems to me that Trump would have gotten a lot of credit if he'd gotten a ceasefire. Now, a ceasefire probably wouldn't hold, so maybe there was no point in trying because it wouldn't have held anyway. But it feels a little bit like maybe Trump didn't get the ceasefire that he wanted and that he's reframing it as, well, the ceasefire is not important. What's important is a larger agreement maybe. So apparently we've decided that an imaginary peace deal is better than an imaginary ceasefire because neither of them were going to happen. They were both imaginary.

Now, does it seem to you like we're having some kind of weird theater? And the theater is this. Unless Ukraine decides to give up valuable land that Russia's already conquered, which I don't see there's any chance of that, there's not going to be any kind of peace deal and there's not going to be any kind of ceasefire. And doesn't it feel to you like the odds of a peace deal are close to zero? Does anybody have that feeling? Now, Trump is the magic peacemaker. So if anybody could do it, he would be the one I would bet on. So it's not zero. Not really, but it feels like it. Can you imagine any scenario in which Ukraine changes its mind on that land exchange? What scenario would allow them to do that?

Here's my best estimate. Suppose the US offered the following idea. Hey, instead of the Russian government and the Ukrainian government deciding who gets what land of the part that's already conquered by Russia, why don't we leave it to a referendum? Now, you might say there's no way you can get a legitimate referendum. You can't really assume that you would get a legitimate vote from the population. But you could poll them, couldn't you? Or couldn't you? Maybe you can't. Maybe that'd be too hard. So suppose you said, since there is no legitimate way that the governments will agree which land should change hands, why don't we turn it over to the populations? Now, I would think that Russia, and you might take Crimea out of the mix because Russia might say, "All right, there's no situation in which we're giving up Crimea." So you might want to take that out of the mix. But if you said for the other stuff, if we could figure out what the population wants, then we should craft our end agreement around that. Now, there are a lot of Russian-speaking people in those conquered lands, right? So it might be that Russia would get what it wanted. And how much would Ukraine want to keep territory that was full of people who would rather be Russian? Would they be losing a lot in that case? I don't know. Maybe fewer problems.

So the only way I could see that a big deal could happen is if they take away from the governments or at least they pretend they're taking it away the question of who gets what land. It's just got to go to somebody independent and/or the population of the people there. And then what I think Ukraine mostly wants is an American guarantee of security, but they would stop short of demanding that they be in NATO. So my guess is that we'll promise that NATO is off the table, but the US will say something like, "But you're going to have to get through us, Russia, if you want to take over what's left of Ukraine." Probably something like that.

Well, what was the reaction over at MSNBC? Did they say it's a great step forward? Trump really set the table? No. They had Susan Rice on and she says that Putin walked away with a quote big victory because the events made him seem like an equal as opposed to the isolated dictator that he is or should be. And Nicole Wallace says that she was more prepared to meet with Vladimir Putin than Trump was. Now, do you notice the mind reading? When the anti-Trumpers run out of good points, which happens kind of quickly, they go to mind reading. Now, how in the world would anyone, especially Nicole Wallace, know how prepared Trump was or wasn't for this meeting? Correct me if I'm wrong, but the topic of Ukraine has been one of his top topics for the entire time he's been in office, when he was running for office. And if there's something he doesn't know about that situation in order to be prepared, I would be really surprised. He might be the most prepared person you've ever seen. Now, I'm not reading his mind. I'm just looking at this situation objectively. Is it really possible that the thing that he probably thinks about the most, the thing that would get him a Nobel Peace Prize, you think he hasn't put enough thought into it? That's such a dumb NPC comment that he wasn't prepared. There's no indication that he wasn't prepared. In fact, he probably was super prepared because he seems to be able to handle a great many topics without too much pressure. That's just one more.

The Wall Street Journal said, "For all the pageantry, President Trump leaves Alaska with little to show while Putin got the recognition he has long sought." Now, is that the case? Well, I would argue that we cannot judge in the present whether this was a plus or a minus because the setting the table thing is all about preparing for the move after. So if you don't see the move that follows, which would be the larger peace negotiations, if you don't see how that turns out, I believe it's ridiculous and stupid. It's just stupid to give it a grade midway. Well, that would be like if you were going to grade a heart surgeon by only watching while he opens up the front of the chest to get access to the heart. You stop there. You go, "Oh, look at that patient. That patient used to be all together and now he's got a big hole in his chest. I guess that's a big old failure." Wouldn't it be smarter to wait till the operation is over and then judge whether your operation was a success? You can't judge it based on they met and they had a good time and they smiled at each other and they said some things you would expect them to say.

Anyway, I would argue this way. How many times have you seen, and I've mentioned this a number of times and then I see other people in the press mention it, that Trump likes to create assets out of nothing and then trade away that asset as part of his negotiation. He just did that with Putin. And most people won't be able to see this, but I think I've trained most of you that you can. It goes like this. Before Putin came to this meeting, according to the Wall Street Journal, according to MSNBC, he did not have the respect of the international community the way he wanted. So we all agree with that part that he was sort of this outcast demonized leader and you know, should have been for good reason. And that this put him up on a level where he's more like an equal to the United States leader. So that on the surface that would look like a mistake, right? It would look like Trump gave him something for nothing. But if you know a little bit more about persuasion and you know that Trump routinely creates assets out of nothing for the purpose of trading them away later or threatening to take them away later, even better.

Here's how you see it. Putin just gained, as the critics rightly point out, he just gained his status. Trump can take that away anytime he wants. The status that Putin gained is completely provisional. He doesn't get to keep it because if a week from now Trump says, "All right, well, we gave you a chance, you little piss ant. You came over here and you smiled at me and you laughed and you had no intention of settling this thing. So now I'm going to destroy your economy and you're a lying piece of shit and I want the rest of the world to know that." Do you see how quickly Trump can take that away from him? So Putin started with none of that respect that would put him on the same plane as Trump. Trump quite deftly elevated him up to just below him. Just below him, but in the same universe, just a little bit below Trump. That was creating an asset out of nothing. Now Trump can take that away. So Putin goes home and he's like, "Yeah, I think I really gained something in world opinion here." No, he didn't. Trump owns that world opinion. He can yank that back in 30 seconds. He can write one post on Truth Social and absolutely pull the rug out. So that's Trump.

Now Putin also being really good at persuasion, but you know, they each have different cards to play. So it doesn't mean they'll have an equal outcome. It just means they're both really good at this. So as much as I say Trump is amazing at persuasion, and he is, he's the best, Putin's right up there. He's not a peer, but he is right just behind him. So Putin knew that he could make Trump want to keep playing with him if he said the things that Trump would want to hear. One of the things they said was that the war never would have happened if Trump had been president. Now, I don't know if that's true, but boy does that fit what Trump wants you to believe, because it's exactly what he says twice a day, every day, for months. So Putin just goes out and backs him. Oh yeah. There wouldn't have been a war if Trump had been in charge. Now, it doesn't matter if that's true because we can't go back in time and test it out. It only matters that he said it and it was so perfectly strategically formed so that Trump would have to say, "Yeah, I do agree with that." So that was masterful of Putin.

And Putin also said he thought the 2020 election might have been rigged, which of course Trump would want to hear. There was something else he said. Oh yeah, he said the election. Listen to this. I think this was Trump quoting Putin. So it's not something we heard from Putin directly, but Trump said that Putin said your election was rigged because you have mail-in voting. He talked about 2020 and he said you won that election by so much. It was a rigged election. Said it was impossible to have fair elections with mail-in voting. Now, seriously, if Putin sat down and he said, I'm going to make a list of the things that Trump would most want to hear of all the things in the world, what would he most want to hear, especially from Putin? It would be the things he said. All right? So if you're grading them on how they did, A+ A+ from Trump, A+ from Putin,