Richardson updates the lay of the land surrounding the summit between Trump and Putin. The consensus from reporters was that members of Trump's team looked shaken after the meeting, which ended prematurely. One suggestion Richardson makes is that Trump's declining cognitive abilities might have come to the fore, necessitating getting him out of there. That's certainly plausible. Then there's this passage:
At the press conference following the summit, NBC News White House correspondent Peter Alexander reported that what struck him was “the looks on the faces of a lot of the American delegation here. Karoline Leavitt…, Steve Witkoff, who came into the room, then left quickly, then came back in. Leavitt appeared to be a bit stressed out, anxious. Their eyes were wide, almost ashen at times.”
This has been followed up by Zelensky and the bulk of NATO heads of government flying to Washington to meet with Trump. That's...unusual. Perhaps in the meeting, Trump suggested leaving NATO, which might have shaken his advisors. We know he floated leaving NATO last time he was in office, but was stopped by the "adults in the room" who are conspicuously absent from this administration.
Another possibility could be that Putin let Trump know that he has dirt on him that perhaps overlaps with the Epstein stuff. There has always been rumors of kompromat on Trump, though I've always thought it was about shady business dealings with Russian oligarchs, the basic contours of the pee tape was that there was damaging sexual material.
Trump likes to caterwaul about the "Russia Hoax" but Putin clearly seems to act like he has Trump's ball in his pockets. If you took all of Trump's actions and assessed them as a whole, I'm not sure what he would do differently, if he were trying to end America's global leadership.
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