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Trump On Putin: "I Think He's Going To Make A Deal"; Trump, Putin Prepare For First Face-To-Face Meeting In Six Years; Federal Agents, National Guard Ramp Up Presence In D.C.; Trump Vows To "Scrape Away The Filth" In Washington. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired August 14, 2025 - 12:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[12:00:00]

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DANA BASH, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: Today on Inside Politics, managing expectations. The White House and the Kremlin are gearing up for what could be a defining moment in global diplomacy, as both Presidents Trump and Putin get a head start on tomorrow's psychological chess with new public comments this morning.

Plus, fortifying the streets. President Trump is ramping up his federal police takeover of Washington, D.C., putting more national guardsmen on duty and expanding the mission to round the clock enforcement.

And two political titans of the Obama years are here for a strategy session on the question, plaguing their party. What is the Democrats path back to power? Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod have a lot to say.

I'm Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines at Inside Politics.

On the eve of his crucial summit with Vladimir Putin, President Trump is setting the bar low and then high, and then low again. Here's what he said just this morning on the Brian Kilmeade show.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (voiceover): I believe now he's convinced that he's going to make a deal, he's going to make a deal. I think he's going to and we're going to find out. I'm going to know very quickly, but there is a 25 percent chance that this meeting will not be a successful meeting, in which case I will run the country, and we have made America great again already in six months.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voiceover): And you'll hit them with consequences, right? You'll hit them with more sanctions, the Senate sanctions go front and center if, if he -- yeah.

TRUMP (voiceover): Oh sure. If it's not solved, look again, we didn't lose any soldiers. We didn't lose anybody, but this was a war. If I didn't get in here, this could have been World War III.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BASH: That came just hours after these comments from President Putin in Moscow.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRES. VLADIMIR PUTIN, RUSSIA: To tell you about the stage we are at with the current American administration, which as everyone knows, is making, in my opinion, quite energetic and sincere efforts to stop the hostilities, stop the crisis, and reach agreements that are of interest to all parties involved in this conflict, in order to create long-term conditions for peace between our countries and in Europe and in the world as a whole. If by the next stage, as we reach agreements in the area of control over strategic offensive weapons.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: CNN's Alayna Treene is at the White House. Alayna, what are you learning about the preps in the building behind you for this really important meeting?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yeah. We're getting a lot more details, Dana, of what this is actually going to look like and what the parameters that the president believes need to be set, as he heads into it. One is, we know, of course, the location of it's going to be at Joint Base, Elmendorf in Anchorage.

But they both said, both the Kremlin but also President Donald Trump and his White House Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, that they expect there to be a joint press conference between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin tomorrow, after all of this ends, which in itself is incredibly notable that this is going to be -- you know, we're going to see Putin standing potentially alongside Donald Trump here, speaking to reporters.

That will come after, though, the one-on-one meeting between the two of them, and then also follows a bilateral lunch between both the leaders and their respective delegations. And just to get into, I think it's so important what you touched on about the expectation setting as we head into this summit. Because so far this week, we've really seen the White House and even the president himself try to keep the expectations low.

You've heard the White House press secretary argue that this is a listening exercise for President Donald Trump. Trump himself said that he doesn't believe it's up to him to make a deal, but now he's saying two important things from that interview. He said one, he doesn't know if they're going to get an immediate ceasefire. And he also said he believes that the Russian president is convinced that he's going to get a deal.

This comes, of course, as we know, European allies of the United States and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy made very clear on that call with President Donald Trump yesterday that they believe any decisions, any potential deal needs, they need to have a seat at the table before that can happen, and also that an immediate ceasefire is necessary before they can move forward. [12:05:00]

Now, what we also heard President Donald Trump say to Brian Kilmeade in that radio interview is that he believes that this one -- this first meeting is the most important part is getting a second meeting. And he wants there to be a second meeting. He said, even potentially having them stay in Alaska and having Zelenskyy join.

But at the same time, we're also hearing that, you know, he believes in the first few minutes of that meeting, he'll know whether or not it's successful. He said that he believes there's a 25 percent chance that this could end in failure. So, still trying, I guess, to keep the expectation somewhere in the middle, despite kind of raising them with what he believes Putin is looking for here.

BASH: Yeah. It's a lot of raising-lowering, raising-lowering. We'll obviously see what actually happens when they meet face-to-face. Thank you so much for that reporting, Alayna. And I'm joined here by a terrific group of reporters, CNN's Phil Mattingly, Margaret Talev of Axios and CNN's Kylie Atwood.

Kylie, I want to read to our viewers some of your awesome reporting that's out on cnn.com this morning. Putin thinks he is winning, so he has no reason to bend, said one person familiar with recent U.S. intelligence assessments. His thinking is he might as well pocket the wins he has now, including the Ukrainian territory he has already taken by force, and then make another run to take more later.

KYLIE ATWOOD, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. U.S. intelligence officials don't believe that Putin's overall objectives when it comes to Ukraine have greatly changed over the last few months. There's some indications that there might be a short-term softening in his goals, an openness to getting some of those territorial winds and actually pocketing them, getting some economic deals with the United States.

But overall, the perspective is much more pessimistic that he's still focused on this maximalist perspective when it comes to gaining Ukrainian territory. And we have heard as such, from Russian officials over the last few days, they've talked about the territories that they have made military gains in, wanting to have control of the entirety of those territories, which would mean Ukraine ceding territory that they haven't even lost to date during this war.

So, what we don't know is how much President Trump is actually taking these intelligence assessments into account when he heads into this meeting, because he personally has been very optimistic that he will be able to tell in the first two minutes, in his words, if President Putin is actually willing to make a deal or not.

MARGARET TALEV, SENIOR CONTRIBUTOR, AXIOS: The way I'm looking at this is just that there is this underlying asymmetry to what is going to unfold tomorrow, which is that President Trump wants to make a deal. That's his incentive. Americans -- many Americans who are swing voters, who voted for him, are saying we thought prices were going to go down. We thought he was going to solve wars in one day. We're not seeing the things he promised.

So that's the domestic political pressure he faces. Putin wants to lock in his gains. And the two entities that are impacted most by this, which is, Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Europe, are not actually at the table, right now at this moment, and are not actually in the room.

So, I think what I don't want to prejudge anything, we won't know how President Trump wants to play this until it unfolds, and what he would consider, you know, a win for himself. But what might be a domestic political win for Donald Trump may in no way align with what would be existentially like, OK, for the Ukrainian leader. And so, I just -- that is what surrounds the uncertainty heading into this summit.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR & CHIEF DOMESTIC AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: And I think it's an important point that people need to keep in perspective as they try and frame what's about to happen. This is the first of, in a best-case scenario, a very lengthy, multi-step, multi- meeting, multi-lateral process that hasn't even started yet and has spent years unable to begin because of where President Putin has been up to this point.

I think what's so striking, though, thinking about this moment, is, you know, you show the clips from the July 2018 joint press conference in Helsinki. Were you there?

TALEV: I was there, yes.

MATTINGLY: Yeah, you were there. I was on Capitol Hill, and I'll never forget as much as the first term blurs together into like, just blurs days continuously walking down from my office in the Capitol to talk to lawmakers at votes after that press conference and seeing their faces --

BASH: Because the president --

MATTINGLY: -- they were so stunned.

BASH: He said he trusted Russian intelligence more than he has.

MATTINGLY: It was just -- it was a moment that, like you could see his closest allies in the Republican Party, of which there were much fewer back then than there are now, grant that. We're so stunned by the tone he took, the frame he took, the side he took, which was largely President Putin's.

And I think it's important to remember that this is a president that is now in a second term, has experienced four years in office, is much more confident in how he operates, and I'll be fascinated to see how that dynamic plays out, compared to 2018.

[12:10:00]

BASH: Such a good point. And I'm so glad you brought that up because it was certainly a -- at a moment that's indelible. Even though he's clearly learned a lot, his approach to Vladimir Putin, or his reaction to Putin, just in the last six months has gone up and down. Let's just look at a little bit. This is starting in February of this year. So just -- I think it was just two or three weeks after he was inaugurated. What President Trump said about Vladimir Putin.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: He wanted to end. He doesn't want to end it and then go back to fighting six months later. I think I do know how to end the war. Despite the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, I've always had a good relationship with Putin.

I'm not happy with what Putin's doing. He's killing a lot of people, and I don't know what the hell happened to Putin. I've known him a long time. We get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin. For you want to know the truth. He's very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless. President Putin, I believe, he wants to see peace, and Zelenskyy wants to see peace.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Kylie?

ATWOOD: As that evolution happened, we have reported that Trump was actually asking people around him, what changed in Putin. Because he thinks that something has fundamentally changed about the Russian leader that he dealt with in the first Trump administration. He was asking Europeans about this. He was asking White House aides about this.

One rationale he was given that's at least partially responsible, they said was the covid pandemic when President Putin was really isolated and became really paranoid. But it's clear that President Trump is, you know, publicly talking about how frustrated he has grown with Putin and privately trying to figure out what has happened here.

I also think it's worth noting, just coming back to the point of what we're going to see come out of this because we really don't know. Neither President Trump or President Putin have laid out clear objectives for this meeting. The clearest person on that has been President Zelenskyy, and to Margaret's point, he's not going to be in the room tomorrow.

So, when President Trump says earlier today that a ceasefire immediately might not actually come, he wants a full peace deal. Well, what is the first step towards that peace deal in his mind? We genuinely don't know.

BASH: Yeah. And I do think it's interesting that they're going to be in Alaska. We've seen in Russian social media there, some Russians are trolling President Trump about the fact that, you know, maybe he'll get -- give Alaska back. Of course, we all remember. You remember Seward's Folly, right?

MATTINGLY: I know, like, we got a great --

(CROSSTALK) BASH: She does, because she covers the State Department, the secretary of state when he bought Alaska, everybody thought he was nuts, and then.

MATTINGLY: Yeah, we got a great deal.

(CROSSTALK)

BASH: This is a modern-day folly of a different -- of a different kind, or whether, you know, the joke's going to be on all of us

MARGARET: Again, this is serious --

BASH: -- and it's going to be the beginning of something real.

MARGARET: A serious business. And the truth is that support for continuing -- and that's certainly never-ending support of Ukraine and the U.S. began sinking a long time ago. We've seen recent evidence with the Gallup polling that the Ukrainians themselves have -- are sort of saying, maybe there is the Ukrainian people, maybe we should start thinking about some kind of negotiated settlement because they don't believe the U.S. will be there, you know, to support them.

So, there are a lot of pressures. And fundamentally, there's economic pressure. For Zelenskyy, this is about independence, his country, and a firewall against Russian aggression. But for President Trump, a lot of the chips on the table may actually be about the economy.

BASH: And just a real quick as we wrap up this conversation. You brought up the fact that there were -- it was a different world when Donald Trump was president for the first time around. Just one example of that, the people who are around him, advising him on national security. John Bolton was his national security advisor back in 2018. Mike Pompeo, Secretary of State, Jim Mattis, Secretary of Defense. Now, of course, you have Marco Rubio, Steve Wyckoff and Pete Hegseth.

MATTINGLY: Obviously, they have very different perspectives, although I think Rubio would probably align, at least traditionally, when he was in the Senate, with some of the first three. I think what that reflects more than anything that then to now is the people around him now are there to execute what the president wants and make what the president's approach to things work, as opposed to -- no, no, that's great, Mr. President, but here's how we should actually do this.

And I think that kind of gets at the point I was making about him being more empowered and confident. The one thing I would say, that answer that he gave Brian Kilmeade on sanctions, given where he's been on this. There are tools that are ready to deploy. Kylie and her team have reported on this a ton. They could launch them the day that the meeting happens, if they want to, and need to, trust me, they can, whether they will --

TALEV: Oh, sure. Was it a bit of a tepid?

BASH: Yeah.

MATTINGLY: Yeah. The dynamic -- the rollercoaster on that has been really interesting to watch too. Yeah.

BASH: Keep them guessing. That seems to be the play. Thank you for your great reporting. Don't go anywhere, you too. Up next, tensions in the nation's capital, as one of the country's most liberal cities faces a Trump takeover of law enforcement on the streets. So how is this city responding? And what comes next from the White House? We'll discuss it after a break.

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[12:15:00]

BASH: Overnight, a new reality took hold in the District of Columbia, right here in Washington. As federal law enforcement joined Metropolitan Police, now under White House control, in setting up police checkpoints on D.C. streets, and some D.C. residents, some of them weren't so thrilled. Protesters showed up by the dozens, and this morning, the White House touted dozens of arrests overnight and said the amped up presence alone makes D.C. safer.

[12:20:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAROLINE LEAVITT, PRESS SECRETARY: There is a huge law enforcement presence here in our nation's capital. Just drive through the streets and you will see it, and that helps to deter crime. We saw this in decades ago in New York City, when it was once a safe city. The president is implementing those same law and order strategies that work.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: CNN's Gabe Cohen joins us, as well as Margaret and Phil who are still here. Gabe, you literally just came in from being out reporting on this for hours and hours. We heard about what could be, what couldn't be, and now we're seeing what is. What is actually happening out there?

GABE COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, look, there are a few aspects of the federal law enforcement asset surge that we're seeing. One, are the FBI agents, the DEA agents, border patrol, those guys who are out there each night, which has created some of the more tense moments. There's also this surge in National Guard troops, which, you know, I was just outside Union Station, the biggest train station in D.C.

About a dozen members of the National Guard were out there with four Humvees. The goal for those guys is really visibility. That's what they want. They just want, essentially, a photo op. At this point, I can tell you, at one point, I actually saw a National Guard official show up with a camera, encourage the troops there to get out of their vehicles, to essentially be active, doing things, they were taking photos. That is really -- it seems about making a statement.

And whether or not it's deterring crime. I can't say, I do walk that route on a daily basis. There are often people sort of outside the station hanging around. That wasn't the case today, but in terms of overall deterrence, we know that they are ramping this up. There are going to be more and more federal law enforcement officers who are going to be out on a daily and nightly basis. We expect it to continue to increase in the days ahead.

TALEV: I think, you know, what Gabe is talking about, raises sort of the conversation that Washingtonians are having, which is, are these moves performative? Are they a slow march toward an authoritarian move around federalization of the capital city and perhaps other cities, or are they somewhere in the middle? Is there going to -- are there going to be some legitimately stepped-up law enforcement efforts in troubled parts of the city.

And like -- OK, it's too soon to say, sorry, that's like a lame place filler. It is too soon to say, it's been a couple of days. But for someone who's living outside of Washington, wondering, wow, is it really like this crime infested, dangerous, like war zone? The answer is no, not most parts of the city at all.

And you can go online to a D.C. government website and actually look at a map of where the federal -- of where violent crimes and all crimes take place. And you can see that they are concentrated in a few patches in the central corridor of the city and in portions of northeast Washington and a couple spots in southeast. And that that is where the overwhelming majority of dangerous crimes happen.

Does that match where this stepped-up presence is being deployed? And do people in those communities want a militarized police presence, or do they want, like law enforcement officers who work for the city in those areas?

BASH: What happened last night was there were protesters who came out, who were not happy about the federal force and the presence in what's known as the 14th Street area was actually on 14th Street, which is kind of -- you know, I don't know what would you say, it is like Gen Z, millennial area right now.

(CROSSTALK)

BASH: OK. All right, all right. So, maybe it happen --

MATTINGLY: It's a place -- it's a social place --

(CROSSTALK)

BASH: No question. But the reason I wanted to bring that up is because some of them were calling the law enforcement fascists. This is according to court documents, and a man was charged after allegedly throwing a sandwich, a sub, to be precise at a federal law enforcement officer during those protests.

Well, it turns out that that person worked past tense now for the DOJ, for the Justice Department. And Pam Bondi, the attorney general, just released something on social media saying, this is an example of the deep state we have been up against for seven months as we work to refocus DOJ. MATTINGLY: Yeah. No, it's totally reflective of the entirety of the sandwich throwers that live deeply within the federal government, which has long been, I think, a well-known a bar --

TALEV: Sandwich thrower fashion.

MATTINGLY: Yeah. That people have talked about. Look, I would caution against trying to ascribe deeper meaning, like, don't throw things at law enforcement officers. That's pretty much a baseline that all people should care about. Subway sandwiches, not great, but like, there are better places to get sandwiches in D.C. too, you could advise.

The one thing I would say is like, this kind of underscores and the immediate response that we saw from the attorney general, you just showed like, this is kind of a trap that people can walk into, and I think that people should be cognizant of that fact, people should protest. If they want to protest, you're allowed to do that without throwing things at lawmakers.

[12:25:00]

But like that's what the administration wants. I think Margaret gets at the critical point here. But what is this? Is still an open question, in terms of authorities, in terms of chain of command, in terms of if it's theatrical, if it's for effect, if it has an actual deterrent effect, or if they plan on this being long standing. I think those are the bigger questions that people need to try and get answers from, and I don't think the administration has them right now.

BASH: Well -- go ahead.

COHEN: I think -- I was just going to say I think that dynamic is really playing out right now between the White House and local officials. Because, on the one hand, we heard the president this morning say, you know, the mayor secretly welcomes more law enforcement. She just won't say it.

Well, actually, in reality, the last couple days, publicly, she and the police chief have said, yeah, you want to search federal law enforcement. We'd love that. We're down hundreds of police officers. If you want to collaborate and you want to help us, that's fine. What we don't want is for you to strip our economy away, and say, we run your police department.

The question is -- because the president is federalized, MPD. He says they are running the show between Terry Cole, who heads the DEA, and Pam Bondi. The question is, are they actually running the show right now? Because folks at City Hall say, not so far, it's been this collaboration, and the police chief is still calling the shots.

BASH: One other part of this that I don't want to lose sight of, and I just want to show a post last night from the president. He said, the White House is in charge. That's his answer to your question. The military and our great police will liberate this city, scrape away the filth and make it safe, clean, habitable and beautiful once more. And then this morning, they started to do something that they said that they would continue to do, which is clear away homeless encampments.

And you know, I'm in touch with some local nonprofit organizations who are trying to figure out what happens to the homeless communities who were part of this encampment? I mean, are they going to find places to go? Will they be sent to jail? Will they be taken care of other ways?

MARGARET: Yeah. I think that's right. I mean, is this going to be a permanent effort to criminalize homelessness? Will their civil rights and human rights as people without homes be observed? That's a really important question.

There's also a political reality, which is that many voters, and particularly sort of that swingable middle that everybody wants to capture in election year are uncomfortable with tent cities in the middle of their cities, in public parks, under bridges, at every intersection.

And so, I think the president, politically, will be tapping into something that, in terms of how most of the public feels. They would welcome some diminishment of homelessness that has seemed in recent years to sort of just be running rampant. But the backend question to that, which most of the public won't be thinking about is, OK, then what? What happens? What is going to happen to these people?

BASH: Yeah, no question. Thank you all very much. Thanks for bringing your reporting here into the studio. I know you're going to go back out onto the streets. Up next. The reality on the ground in Ukraine as President Trump and President Putin prepare to face -- prepare to meet, rather face-to-face. What Ukrainians hope is not forgotten in the pursuit of a deal.

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