Pundits — including some from Fox News — believed U.S. President Donald Trump appeared to be “steamrolled” by Russian President Vladimir Putin after the world leaders’ summit in Alaska.
The highly anticipated meeting in Anchorage on Friday ended after around three hours with little clarity. Both leaders suggested progress had been made on talks about the future of the war in Ukraine but neither disclosed details during their joint appearance in front of the world’s press where neither took questions from journalists.
Putin spoke first, an atypical move for statements with the U.S. president on U.S. soil, touting the “agreement that we’ve reached together.”
While Trump called the meeting “extremely productive” and said the pair made “great progress,” he emphasized no agreement had been reached: “There’s no deal until there’s a deal.”
Former government officials and commentators seemed to overwhelmingly agree that Putin walked away from the meeting triumphant.
John Bolton, who served as Trump’s national security adviser during his first administration, told CNN that Putin came off victorious: “Trump did not lose but Putin clearly won.”
“Putin achieved most of what he wanted and Trump achieved very little,” he told the network.
Bolton then said Trump looked drained: “I thought Trump looked very tired up there. I mean, very tired. Not disappointed, tired.”
California Governor Gavin Newsom also remarked on Trump’s energy levels on X, writing in a style that he’s been using recently to troll the U.S. president. “TRUMP JUST FLED THE PODIUM WITH PUTIN — NO QUESTIONS, NOTHING! TOTAL LOW ENERGY. THE MAN LOOKED LIKE HE’D JUST EATEN 3 BUCKETS OF KFC WITH VLAD,” the governor wrote.
MSNBC host Jen Psaki, who is the former White House Press Secretary for Joe Biden, said the meeting similarly appeared to be a “big victory” for Putin, who was greeted warmly in Alaska by Trump.
“For a decade now, Vladimir Putin has been isolated on the world stage,” Psaki said, noting Russia’s ousting from the G8 in 2014 and the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Putin in 2023. “Today that isolation ended and he was welcomed back on U.S. soil.”
She added: “That is the big victory for Vladimir Putin today.”
Fox News’ Senior White House Correspondent Jacqui Heinrich, who was reporting from Anchorage, said the Russian president “steamrolled” his U.S. counterpart.
“The way that it felt in the room was not good. It did not seem like things went well. And it seemed like Putin came in and steamrolled, got right into what he wanted to say and got his photo next to the president and then left,” Heinrich said.
Michael McFaul, the former U.S. Ambassador to Russia under Barack Obama, told MSNBC that the meeting outcome was unfavorable to both Ukraine and America: “Even the most minimal, minimal outcome, which is agreement to a trilateral meeting with Presidents Zelensky, Putin and Trump, was not announced today. So there was no outcome that was good for the Ukrainian people. But I want to say this was bad for the American people.”
He believed the meeting showed the U.S. “normalizing” imperialism, terrorism, annexation, and dictatorship, he said. America has “always been the leader of the free world. It certainly didn’t feel that way tonight.”
Despite the criticism, Trump told Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Friday evening that on a scale of 1 to 10, the president believed the meeting was a 10.
NewsNation host Leland Vittert said he believed Putin “rolled over” in the pair’s speech to press and “did everything to ingratiate himself” to Trump. Vittert said it’s unclear whether Putin did the same during negotiations.
The Russian president used endearing terms including calling the U.S. a “dear neighbor.”
Putin also echoed one of Trump’s oft-repeated claims, suggesting that the war in Ukraine would not have started if Trump had remained in office after the 2020 election.
Earlier in the day, Trump rolled out the red carpet for Putin, greeting him warmly before they hopped into the U.S. president’s armored stretch vehicle, known as “The Beast.”
Fox News host Laura Ingraham similarly defended the U.S. president. “Anyone saying that the Trump- Putin meeting was a failure is ignorant, biased or both,” she wrote on X. “Dealing with the Russians, forging peace, requires strength, knowledge, respect and patience—and that’s what we saw from Donald Trump today. This was a step forward.”
At the end of the meeting, the Russian leader proposed the pair have their next meeting in Moscow.
“That’s an interesting one, I’ll get a little heat on that one,” Trump replied. “But I could see it possibly happening.”
