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NBC News
3 days ago
- NBC News
What a summit win looks like for Trump – and for Putin: From the Politics Desk
Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, a newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team's latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail. In today's edition, Kristen Welker outlines the stakes for the in-person meeting between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, their first since 2019, as they arrive in Alaska. After shaking hands on the tarmac, Putin joined Trump in his car. . Plus, Rob Wile answers this week's reader question on what happens to the money the government collects from tariffs. — Adam Wollner The high stakes for Trump as he comes face to face with Putin Analysis by Kristen Welker President Donald Trump's summit today with Russian President Vladimir Putin comes with incredibly high stakes for the future of Russia's war with Ukraine — and for Trump himself. The president seemed to be lowering expectations ahead of the face-to-face meeting, telling Fox News Radio yesterday that 'there a 25% chance that this meeting will not be a successful meeting.' So what does a win for Trump look like? A senior administration official also told me that Trump 'is realistic that this is likely a multistep process and he's ready and positive about this step forward.' But Western and U.S. officials say that a victory for Trump is an unconditional and immediate ceasefire, and that if there are conditions attached, that's a win for Putin. It remains to be seen if Putin will try to cloud these talks by raising other issues on his agenda, like a nuclear arms deal and easing sanctions against Russia. It's also unclear whether Trump will offer any incentives to the Russians, and keep his promise to Ukraine and European allies that he will not negotiate territory. All of this underscores the political risk for Trump as he navigates a war that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives and fueled a robust debate over how long the U.S. should provide financial and military support to Ukraine. Trump said during the 2024 campaign that he would end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours upon taking office, but he has acknowledged that doing so is far more complicated than he could have anticipated. Meanwhile, recent polling has found that more voters disapprove of his handling of the war. A recent Wall Street Journal poll found a slim majority of voters (51%) disapproving of Trump's handling of the Russia-Ukraine war, while 41% approved (the survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points). That poll also showed that 58% of voters were in favor of sending additional financial aid to Ukraine, a 10-point increase since January, while 36% were in opposition. We'll be delving into the fallout from the high-stakes summit on 'Meet the Press' this Sunday with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn. ✉️ Mailbag: Where does the tariff money go? Thanks to everyone who emailed us! This week's question comes from Tara Vargas: 'Trump claims to be raking in trillions from tariffs. I read that the money goes into the general fund. But does it really? And if not there, where?' To answer that, we turned to business reporter Rob Wile. Here's his response: Yes, it does go into the U.S. Treasury's General Fund — something the department calls 'America's Checkbook' — and is used to finance both daily and long-term government operations, ranging from federal employee salaries to interest payments. Congress establishes how the general fund is spent in its appropriations bills. While the Treasury Department tracks where revenues come from, it generally does not individually earmark a set of funds from a given revenue source for a specific purpose. 'You can think of [tariffs revenues] as helping reduce the overall deficit, or offsetting the costs of the One Big Beautiful Bill,' said Marc Goldwein, senior vice president and senior policy director at the nonpartisan think tank Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. 'It doesn't go into any kind of dedicated trust fund.' In July, the Treasury took in about $29 billion in tariffs. Every month since April, when Trump announced 'reciprocal' tariffs, has seen record tariffs revenues come in. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget projects that the tariffs could bring in as much as $1.3 trillion of net new revenues through the end of Trump's current term, and $2.8 trillion through 2034 — though it cautions these estimates are 'very rough' and intended to reflect 'the general magnitude' of Trump's overall approach to the import taxes 'given the complexity of the tariffs and their impacts.' The U.S. Government Accountability Office, the chief auditing agency of the federal government, has found significant, long-running issues with how General Fund payments are tracked and reported, though it does not suggest any funds are actively being misappropriated. The Treasury, it said in March, 'records transactions as a group total instead of individual balances and then processes them through a variety of systems.' It continued: 'As a result, we did not have enough information to determine if the amounts reported are reliable, and therefore, the Schedules were not auditable. More recently, we've identified additional challenges that impact the ability to clearly track funds. This includes oversight of information coming from outside entities, such as banks, that collect money on behalf of the federal government.'
NBC News
3 days ago
- NBC News
Trump tempers expectations ahead of Putin meeting
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — President Donald Trump will host his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, for a meeting here Friday in an audacious bid to broker a peace deal and stop a three-year war with Ukraine and its ever-rising body count. Trump spent the run-up to the summit tempering expectations that it would produce a breakthrough, casting it instead as a prelude to an as-yet-unscheduled meeting that would include Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. 'All I want to do is set the table for the next meeting, which should happen shortly,' Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday. Normally bullish about his negotiating skills, Trump told Fox News Radio that the odds are 1 in 4 that his sit-down with Putin would be a failure. His press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, likened the summit to a 'listening exercise' given that Zelenskyy wouldn't be present. 'The president is realistic that this is likely a multistep process and he's ready and positive about this step forward,' a senior Trump administration official told NBC News on Friday morning, when asked about the president's mindset. Still, the sit-down between the two leaders at a U.S. military base stands as one of the few hopeful moments in a grinding conflict that started in February 2022 when Russia sent tanks rolling across the border into Ukraine with the goal of swallowing up its democratic neighbor. Trump has pushed for the two nations to end the fighting as he makes an increasingly public campaign to win the Nobel Peace Prize. After boarding Air Force One on Friday morning for his flight to Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Trump said of his face-to-face visit with Putin: 'Something's going to come of it.' Russia's early attempt to march into Kyiv, the Ukraine capital, sputtered and the conflict has since devolved into a war of attrition, with casualties totaling about 1.5 million. At present, Putin holds a slight edge on the battlefield. Trump enjoys considerable leverage over both combatants. If he chooses, he could slap stiffer sanctions on countries such as India that buy oil from Russia. Or he could withhold much-needed money and military hardware that have kept Ukraine in the fight against its bigger adversary. For those reasons alone, the warring countries need to take seriously Trump's insistence that the conflict end. 'Putin is clearly in a weaker position,' William Taylor, who was U.S. ambassador to Ukraine under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, said in an interview. 'This invasion of Ukraine has turned out to be a disaster for him. Trump has the cards this time.' Trump and Putin are set to begin talking around 3:30 p.m. ET with translators present for both sides. The U.S. delegation plans to lay out a red carpet for Putin when he leaves his plane, two senior administration officials said. The location is itself rich in symbolism. For one, the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Putin stemming from his conduct in the war, meaning he could have been apprehended if the site had been in a host of other nations. (The U.S. is not a signatory to the court.) What's more, Alaska used to belong to Putin's country, a fact that Russian commentators and political elite have seized on as a positive signal for the talks. The U.S. purchased the territory in 1867 for $7.2 million, an acquisition that, ironically, strengthened America's military position on the Pacific rim in a rivalry with Russia that has waxed and waned for decades. 'Putin has agreed to come to Trump, to come to America,' Robert O'Brien, White House national security adviser in Trump's first term, said in an interview. 'That's critical because Alaska is a former Russian colony and Putin's whole policy is about recovering what he believes to be former Russian Empire territory. Putin wants all of Russia's territory back and yet he's coming to a place that was a former Russian colony to meet with the president of the United States — when he has no chance of getting Alaska back.' A subplot of the meeting is the personal chemistry between the American and Russian presidents. Trump took office in 2017 wanting a good relationship with Putin, who has become a pariah over his assault on Ukraine's sovereignty. Upon his return to the White House in January, Trump at one point suggested he had a certain kinship with Putin over investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential race. 'Let me tell you, Putin went through a hell of a lot with me,' Trump said during a televised meeting with Zelenskyy in the Oval Office in February. More recently, Trump has voiced irritation with Putin over continued Russian attacks on Ukraine. Though Putin has sounded accommodating in phone calls, Trump has said, Russia hasn't let up its military assault. 'We get a lot of bulls--- thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth," Trump said last month. 'He's very nice all of the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.' Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Friday that the summit carries risks in legitimizing Putin. "My worry is that, well, the photo-op in and of itself essentially legitimizes war crimes, telegraphs to other autocrats or evil men around the world that they can get away with murdering civilians and still get a photo-op with the president of the United States," he said. Trump was initially optimistic he could end the war quickly. Lately, he's conceded that the war has proved a more stubborn problem than he anticipated. A central point of contention is land. Zelenskyy insisted last week that Ukraine would not cede territory to Russia. 'Ukrainians will not give their land to the occupier,' he said. Trump has suggested that some mutual ' swapping' of territories would be part of a ceasefire. In his remarks Friday on Air Force One, he said that he would discuss divisions of territory in his meeting with Putin, though he added, 'I've got to let Ukraine make that decision.' In a post on X Friday morning, Zelenskyy wrote in English: 'The key thing is that this meeting should open up a real path toward a just peace and a substantive discussion between leaders in a trilateral format — Ukraine, the United States, and the Russian side. It is time to end the war, and the necessary steps must be taken by Russia. We are counting on America. We are ready, as always, to work as productively as possible.' As it now stands, Trump is set to hold a news conference after his meeting and working lunch with Putin, and then fly home Friday night. If the two sides make progress, he has said he might prolong the trip and invite Zelenskyy to fly in and take part in further talks. Once a TV showman, Trump seems well aware of the drama and intrigue surrounding a summit that is drawing worldwide attention.
Fox News
3 days ago
- Fox News
Fox News Highlights – August 14th, 2025
Fox News Highlights – August 14th, 2025 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit FOX News Radio
