JUDY WOODRUFF: We return now to the turbulent aftermath of President Trump's meeting with
Vladimir Putin.
For more, we have the analysis of Shields and Salam.
That's syndicated columnist Mark Shields and "National Review" executive editor Reihan
Salam.
David Brooks is away.
Welcome to both of you.
Mark, it has been a turbulent, turmoilish week, from NATO to Great Britain, to the meeting
with Vladimir Putin, back to Washington.
What are we left with?
MARK SHIELDS: We're left with, Judy, a week of -- I think a blow to the United States
of America.
I don't think there's any question about it, to our leadership, the fraying of the relations
with our longtime allies, a dismissal, almost a disparagement by the American president
of democratically elected leaders, and the messy problems that democracy requires, an
adulation, a flattery, a giant sucking sound in the company of the Russian dictator by
the president's part.
And Dan Balz, perhaps as respected writer as there is on politics in America, wrote:
"When the setting called for a show of strength and resolve, Trump instead offered deference,
defensiveness, equivocation and weakness."
And I think that's fair.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Do you have as dark an assessment, Reihan?
REIHAN SALAM: Well, I think it's helpful to take some perspective.
Consider President Trump's meeting with Kim Jong-un of North Korea.
Kim Jong-un is an absolutely brutal, awful dictator.
Donald Trump had very warm words for him.
Some weeks later, Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, then met with the North Korean regime.
And then the North Korean regime responded by saying, they're making gangster-like demands,
they're taking this much more hard-line position.
Donald Trump, when it comes to offering warm words for authoritarian leaders, does a lot,
goes a long way in ways that other Republicans feel makes them very uncomfortable.
But he is a minority of one in his own administration when it comes to those warm words.
And when it comes to actual substance, you see a much tougher line.
If you look at Pompeo, if you look at Jim Mattis, if you look at John Bolton, these
are all people who have taken a consistently hawkish line.
And the president himself, he reversed himself.
Again, that's quite unusual, for him to have reversed himself so quickly, because Republicans
were foursquare behind this idea that, no, in fact, they also -- Republicans in Congress
passed legislation, bipartisan legislation, keep in mind, that says that they can impose
sanctions that the president of the United States can't reverse.
That is legislation that Donald Trump signed in 2017.
So that's important background to keep in mind.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, Mark Shields, are we making too much of the -- too much of the words of
President Trump?
MARK SHIELDS: No.
I mean, he is the policy-maker.
He is the face and the voice of the United States of America.
Every president has been.
Ronald Reagan was when he said, tear down that wall and called the Soviet Union an evil
empire.
Donald Trump is when he stands there and contradicts the unanimous judgment of all the men and
women who are professionals in the United States intelligence services, who have concluded
unanimously that Russia, Russia was behind the meddling, cyber-attacks, and continues
to be at this time, and stands there and says -- pays the ultimate compliment.
You can talk about his words.
We know his words.
In his lexicon, the lexicon of Donald Trump, there are no greater compliments than to say
strong and powerful.
And what did he -- whom did he call?
To call anybody weak is the ultimate insult.
And he paid the ultimate compliment to Mr. Putin, as he stood there, in refusing to endorse
and support the work of the American intelligence professionals in public.
We have never seen a situation like that before.
No American president has ever done it.
REIHAN SALAM: There was a fascinating moment during that press conference, where President
Putin had to say, President Trump continues to say that the annexation of Crimea was illegal.
President Putin actually reminded the global public of this.
Why did he do that?
That's a really puzzling question.
Right?
You would think that would be President Trump who would be saying that, who would be taking
that kind of stern step of reminding the wider global audience of the differences between
them.
JUDY WOODRUFF: I think that got overlooked.
REIHAN SALAM: And one of the reasons why President Putin did that is because he recognizes that
Donald Trump alone doesn't represent the American government in its entirety.
What has happened is that Republicans are more unified against Vladimir Putin.
Democrats are far more inclined to take a hard line against Russia than they had been
before Donald Trump came into office.
Vladimir Putin knows that, for his purposes, this wasn't a victory.
It was in fact a defeat, because Donald Trump, his style of negotiating is, regrettably,
one in which he says a lot at one point, but then his administration takes very sharply
different action.
If anything, we're going to get a more hawkish line on Russia in the months to come.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, Mark, I mean, I will ask it again.
(CROSSTALK)
JUDY WOODRUFF: Go ahead.
MARK SHIELDS: Where was the defeat?
Where was the -- it was a defeat for Putin?
REIHAN SALAM: Absolutely.
Absolutely, because what Vladimir Putin wants is to get some component of the bipartisan
establishment reconciled to the idea of a warmer relation with Russia.
In fact, we got the exact opposite.
Donald Trump himself on the flight on Air Force One back home from Helsinki realized
that this didn't play especially well with the people he depends on to shield him from
investigations and much else.
He understood the tremendous vulnerability.
He understands that there are people in his own administration who may well leave that
administration and leave him in a more vulnerable position if he moves in that direction.
And, again, look to North Korea.
JUDY WOODRUFF: That says -- but what you're saying is that -- is that there was a mass
created that required a lot of cleaning up.
REIHAN SALAM: And, also, remember the North Korea precedent.
Remember the fact that these -- we're talking about this as though it's unprecedented.
Donald Trump praised the North Korean dictator.
And then North Korea suddenly realized, wait a second, that doesn't amount to us getting
everything we want.
MARK SHIELDS: Donald Trump has told us that nuclear arms are gone from the Korean Peninsula.
REIHAN SALAM: Which is nonsensical.
MARK SHIELDS: Nonsensical, nonsensical.
REIHAN SALAM: But, of course, that's not what he said, right?
He didn't say the weapons are gone.
What he says, I'm committed to denuclearization.
Now, that doesn't mean what the North Koreans believe it means, right?
There's room for interpretation.
And what we have seen is actually a more hawkish posture in the weeks since then.
So it's very important to keep these precedents in mind before we claim that this is going
to be some grand breakthrough.
MARK SHIELDS: At what point do we get this seismograph or this magic detector that -- with
two box tops and a coupon, that allows us to tell when he's telling the truth?
When he stands there and says Kim Jong-un loves his people, loves his people, this is
a man who has killed thousands of Koreans, who has starved...
(CROSSTALK)
REIHAN SALAM: It's absolutely appalling.
And it's also the case that the U.S. government and the Trump administration didn't, in fact,
give away the store.
This is absolutely rattling.
It is wrong for the president of the United States to appear to the be kowtowing to the
Russian president.
It's also important to recognize, however, that Donald Trump styles himself as an unconventional
figure, someone who is actually seeking diplomatic break breakthroughs, diplomatic breakthroughs
that I do not believe are going to materialize.
JUDY WOODRUFF: But, Reihan, you're saying, for all the fuss we're making over the behavior,
the words of President Trump, in the end, the policy is going to turn out all right?
Is that what you're saying?
REIHAN SALAM: What I'm saying is that the words are dangerous.
It is wrong.
It is disorienting.
And it's something that is actually sapping some of the trust that people have in him.
I think that that's not a good thing.
But the policy is moving in a different direction.
MARK SHIELDS: There's no question that he was overmatched with Putin.
I mean, there's no question who was the supplicant in that relationship.
There's no question who was the big dog and who was the puppy seeking the approval.
And the reality, when you come back -- and I don't know when this epiphany occurred,
that he realized things hadn't worked out, because it didn't occur -- they had to sit
down with him.
They had to confront him in his own administration before he would even acknowledge, begrudgingly,
two letters.
That didn't change that the United States was at fault, that he blamed his own country,
that he blamed America first.
No American president has ever done that before.
But when you get verbs like revise, revamp, contradict, change, modify, those are not
the words of a thoughtful leader or a strong leader, or a principled leader.
Those are the words of somebody who really is overmatched in a public situation.
REIHAN SALAM: What they might also be, however, are the words of someone who has promised
diplomatic breakthroughs and change.
Now, this something that is very rattling for those of us, myself very much included,
who believe that the architecture of our existing alliances is enormously valuable.
But, again, Donald Trump believes that, by shaking things up, he is going to bring us
to a better place.
Now, it happens that members of his own administration are deeply skeptical about that posture.
And that is actually the substance of what we're getting.
President Trump doesn't have the power to reverse sanctions.
That is exactly what Putin wants.
And he's not going to get it.
And he's less likely to get it now than two weeks ago.
MARK SHIELDS: Let me just ask one question.
REIHAN SALAM: Please.
MARK SHIELDS: Do you think that, after 9/11, when Dan Coats was the United States ambassador
to Germany, and he stood with Gerhard Schroeder, the chancellor of Germany, at the Brandenburg
Gate, and thanked 200,000 Germans for their supporting the United States in its hour of
need after the 9/11 attack, and invoked -- in voting to invoke Article 5 of NATO to support
United States and its attack, do you think Donald Trump has any idea that that happened?
REIHAN SALAM: I think...
MARK SHIELDS: Do you think he any idea that Dan Coats even was there?
I mean, this is a man who...
REIHAN SALAM: I believe it's worth mentioning that Gerhard Schroeder ran an explicitly anti-American
political campaign that, during that time, members of the NATO alliance, including Turkey,
said that we will not allow the United States to enter Iraq via our territory.
That was a period of enormous fractiousness within the NATO alliance.
And NATO survived and proved resilient.
That is also important to remember.
Dan Coats is a loyal public servant who deserves a great deal of credit, but let's not forget
history.
MARK SHIELDS: Do you think Donald Trump is aware of any of this?
REIHAN SALAM: I can't say, Mark.
(CROSSTALK)
MARK SHIELDS: You're an informed person, Reihan.
REIHAN SALAM: What I can say is that the NATO alliance has survived much worse than that.
JUDY WOODRUFF: I think -- I think temperatures are rising all around this week.
MARK SHIELDS: OK.
All right.
JUDY WOODRUFF: I do want to bring us back, at the very end of the program, to some news
today that there was, Mark, the revelation, New York Times and other news organizations,
that there was a recording made between President Trump and his lawyer Michael Cohen about payments
to a former Playboy bunny.
That -- that's now been reported.
You have that happening at the end of this week.
You also have the new information this week that the president has already raised almost
$90 million toward his own reelection.
Are we looking at a situation here where we deal with the controversies of the week, include
-- both on the personal level and the international level, but we're still looking at someone
who is going to be a machine when it comes to raising money and doing the things that
he has to do to get reelected?
MARK SHIELDS: Well, I mean, I don't think there is any question his money-raising is
prodigious and continues to be.
And it's in large amounts.
And if the administration has its way and Republicans have their way, there'll be less
and less disclosed all the time of where that money comes from.
But I think the Michael Cohen tape is quite fascinating, because it's hard to believe
there's only one tape.
I think, if you're taping, you're not just taping -- it's not a one-off.
And I would say, in addition, Judy, I don't know whose fault it is, this tape, whether
it's Hillary Clinton's or the fake news people who made that tape and put it in Michael Cohen's
hands.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, just about 10 seconds.
REIHAN SALAM: Well, we know that this is a very unpredictable political landscape, and
that there are many other Republicans, including Mike Pence, including a number of senators,
who are preparing their own political futures, including 2020.
We do not know what the world is going to look like in a few years time.
So I don't think that Donald Trump's prodigious fund-raising necessarily means that his political
future is assured.
And Democratic fund-raising, by the way, has been very prolific indeed during the Trump
era.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Reihan Salam, Mark Shields, thank you both.
MARK SHIELDS: Judy, thank you.
REIHAN SALAM: Thank you.
Thanks.