Trump says he has 'low expectations' for his summit with Putin

(Image credit: CBS/Screenshot)

published 15 July 2018

"I go in with low expectations," President Trump said of his Monday summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in a CBS interview aired Sunday morning.

"I'll let you know after the meeting," he added of his goals for the encounter, which begins with private talks attended only by the leaders' translators. "I think it's a good thing to meet. I do believe in meetings. ... Nothing bad is going to come out of it, and maybe some good will come out."

Trump also indicated he will ask about extradition of the 12 Russian intelligence agents indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe Friday. "I hadn't thought of that," he said. "But I — certainly, I'll be asking about it. But again, this was during the Obama administration. They were doing whatever it was during the Obama administration." Highlighting the timeline of the election meddling is a new favorite strategy for the president; he noted it in multiple weekend tweets.

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Watch an excerpt of Trump's comments below. Bonnie Kristian

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.