John Heilemann on Alaska Meeting: Trump Has To Have His Actions Match His Words and He Has To Not Get Played

EXCERPT:

HEILEMANN: “You have a lot of foreign policy and national security experts who point out all the time that there hasn't been a commensurate toughening, as I said, a commensurate toughening on the policy side. So I think the answer to your question, the direct question of what does Donald Trump have to do, he has to have his actions match his words and he has to not get played. Because I think there is a high expectation among a lot of people that Vladimir Putin, the grandmaster, strategic wizard, former KGB, all of that stuff is going to walk into this meeting and be able to set Trump up and put him in an awkward position, where coming out of the meeting and into that press conference, which I've never seen Donald Trump pass up a press conference opportunity before. So I wouldn't expect, no matter how this meeting goes, that they don't end up standing up in front of reporters after this, but that somehow Putin puts him in a position that he somehow ends up on Putin's side or in a position where Putin is able to effectively get the United States to blame Ukraine for the lack of progress coming out of the meeting.”