JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Presidents Trump and Putin have just finished their summit meeting and at a press conference in which the two leaders took no questions from the press.

President Trump made it clear that he likes President Putin very much, but he also said there's no deal until there's a deal.

We don't know yet what happened in that meeting.

We don't know if anything happened in that meeting, but we do know that there's no ceasefire in Ukraine and we know that Putin, just by virtue of being invited to Alaska, had a very good day.

Trump has been busy at home as well, attempting to seize control of law enforcement here in the capital.

The fight isn't only about Washington.

It's about using the military for domestic law enforcement.

Joining me tonight to discuss all this, David Ignatius, a foreign affairs columnist at The Washington Post, Zolia Kanno-Youngs is a White House correspondent for The New York Times, Scott McFarlane is the justice correspondent at CBS News, and Vivian Salama is a staff writer at The Atlantic.

Welcome to all of you.

Thank you very much for being here.

Let's go right to the big event of the day.

We'll talk about whether it was indeed a big event, but the two presidents did meet in Alaska.

They came out.

They did not seem to agree on the most important issues, namely a ceasefire in Ukraine or something more than ceasefire.

David, give us your initial assessment on what just happened.

DAVID IGNATIUS, Columnist, The Washington Post: So, Jeff, it's just a few hours after, and so these are very preliminary, but, you know, you could say this is the anti-climax in Anchorage.

We all had such expectations.

It's gotten intense media scrutiny and it seems nothing was agreed.

Trump's comment was, we didn't get there, but we have a chance of getting there.

I have an odd sense that given my fears about what might happen, that there might be a Putin-Trump deal that would then be rammed down the throat of Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine.

You could argue that no news is good news, at least for the moment, that Trump has said we, we talked about a lot of key issues, there's still points of disagreement.

He wouldn't say what they were.

He was not his usual, flamboyant, theatrical self, self-promoting, look at all the great -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Was that because of the seriousness of the nature of the event or because he came out with pretty bad news to himself?

DAVID IGNATIUS: So, I think there clearly is an impasse in these negotiations, which, to me, means that Trump is not willing to cave to what Putin wants.

Putin was very clear.

He still is focused on what he calls root causes, which is a kind of code for future limits on Ukraine's sovereignty.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: May I ask one more question about root causes?

As I understand it though, root cause for Putin is the existence of Ukraine.

DAVID IGNATIUS: The root cause is the Ukraine that wants to be part of Europe and that rejects Russia's hegemony and dictation.

And, you know, that is part of where they're stuck, you have to guess.

And the fact that Trump today didn't cave and said it, the first thing he's going to do is talk to Ukraine and his European allies actually found a good takeaway.

So, you know, again, you could say that, you know, they came out with no agreement, oh, that's terrible news.

Given the possibility of an agreement, that would be a bad agreement, I'm actually content with where they are.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Vivian, how do you read today starting with the red carpet and the enthusiastic-looking Trump greeting Putin?

VIVIAN SALAMA, Staff Writer, The Atlantic: Well, Trump is someone who we know likes theatrics, in general.

Staging is part of that, and so that was a big part of it.

We saw flyovers for military jets as the two leaders approached the podium.

That's at Alaska 2025 in jumbo letters.

And so, you know, a lot of it was just that, was staging.

But, of course, you know, just the high-profile nature of this, Trump wanted it to be splashy because he knew that people around the world were watching this moment, regardless of what came out of it, just the nature of it, the fact that they were meeting in the United States for the first time in many years, and Putin almost being legitimized by a western leader.

It was significant.

I was getting messages, and I'm sure all of you were too from officials all around the world today.

All of them were watching play by play and not the White House got what it wanted.

Also, Trump remember, believes that speaking is better than not speaking.

And so he believes that addressing Putin, talking face-to-face, is better.

He wanted to talk to the Taliban face-to-face in his first term.

He talked to Kim Jong-un.

So, this is very much tracking with how he conducted things.

Whether or not he comes out with anything, that's another story.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Does he come out with anything?

ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS, White House Correspondent, The New York Times: As of right now, it doesn't seem like he came out with much.

I mean, he did get the show, right?

He did get the show, which matters to him.

And if you're an ally in Europe right now, to your point, David, I think you're probably breathing a sigh of relief that the president didn't come out and say something like Ukraine started the war, which we've seen him do in the past and absolutely is not true.

But, you know, even in the days leading up to this, Trump and the White House, they were lowering expectations for the results that would come out of this meeting.

I think they knew that there was a low chance that they would actually come out and have something substantial to announce that indicated progress to establishing peace in Ukraine.

After promising during the campaign to end this war in 24 hours, you know, the president has gone through stages.

He had his allies saying that he was getting played by Putin.

He got infuriated at Putin.

And now and then in the days leading up to this, he was trying to lower expectations.

And then today, you saw him not take any questions at all.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: You cover him day to day.

How important is the cause of peace for him in terms of global acclaim, which is a euphemism for the fact that he -- everybody says he wants a Nobel Peace Prize very badly?

What motivates him to be engaged this at this level?

ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS: That's true.

I mean, it's an accolade that he hasn't obtained yet, and he does want that.

You know, I'm sure we've noticed he's been talking more and more about his role in establishing peace in Congo and Rwanda, even though fighting has continued.

He's talked about his role with India and Pakistan.

Those are probably not conflicts that you thought were top of mind for the president coming into this administration or top priorities.

But it's about something else.

It's about establishing himself as a peacemaker on the global stage, even though he has yet to make substantial progress on the two conflicts that he talked about the most during the campaign, Israel and Gaza and ending this war in Ukraine.

He hasn't done that yet, but he feels that with an event like this, he can continue with this campaign to try and get a Nobel Peace Prize, which does matter to him.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes, go ahead.

VIVIAN SALAMA: I was just going to say put also knows who he's dealing with this time around at the press conference, he said, you know, President Trump has repeatedly said that this war would never have happened if he were president, and I believe that's true, completely tapping into Trump's ego on this very issue, because he feels that Trump wants to be that peacemaker.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes.

I want to ask Scott about that.

I noticed that as well.

It was -- they were both buttering each other up in a certain way.

You've watched President Trump operate for years.

Talk about the personality traits or the political machinations that you saw in the interaction, even the physical interaction between the two.

SCOTT MACFARLANE, Justice Correspondent, CBS News: I found some of this jarring.

If you think about the timing of how this unveiled itself, they chose, for whatever reason, to take the podiums and go before the world's view at 6:30 P.M. on the East Coast.

For the president's generation, for a lot of generations, that's the time to make news, the evening news hour across America, and they had little to say.

They had no capacity to make news.

And they didn't answer questions, which is so against the muscle memory of the president.

I just found all of this to be counterintuitive based on what we've seen with President Trump.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: David, I want to stay on that because that's -- you are absolutely right.

He does like to talk.

He likes to riff and tell funny stories.

The fact that they walked out of there without taking questions does suggest that something pretty bad might have happened.

DAVID IGNATIUS: To me, it suggests that they're at an impasse.

And words I would rarely never before use about Trump are discipline and patience.

And he actually was disciplined today, rather than do his usual riff and, you know, do the wave and talk and talk and talk, he didn't say anything.

And rather than, you know, rush to make some kind of news, as Scott is saying, everybody expected, he had the discipline to say, I don't have anything to say now.

I'm going to talk to my allies.

So, those are unusual qualities for Trump.

In this situation, I'm actually glad that he's being careful and he's talking with others as they address this impasse.

I mean, it's clear that Putin, as he talked about root causes, isn't prepared to come off that demand to limit Ukraine's sovereignty, and that's a sticking point, as it should be.

And if he'd rushed to resolve it, I think it would add a bad outcome.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: I understand your points, but, Scott, I also noted that the president could not help but talk about the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax in the middle of what should be the highest stakes meeting in the world, right, Russia, and claimed Vladimir Putin as an ally, without saying in so many words, that Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, was no friend of his on the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax and in helping him through his own political gain.

Did it strike you at all that he didn't have enough discipline to avoid the thing that really irks him?

SCOTT MACFARLANE: It may seem cryptic to so many people across the globe watching that, but that is such a direct and declarative shout out to the Trump base.

They know that is a reference to a criticism of President Obama, an allegation that he has been wronged throughout his political career.

It speaks quickly and efficiently to his audience.

You know, who else would like some declarative information?

How about the Congress, which will have to appropriate something for Ukraine, possibly in short order.

It's a wedge issue inside Trump's base.

You know, some of his supporters want to fund it.

Some of them do not want to fund it.

He didn't give any clarity on that today either.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

I want to -- I want you all to watch, Zolan, you mentioned this a brief clip that -- from Monday press conference at the White House in which Trump, to my mind at least, doesn't seem to understand cause and effect in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Can we watch that just for one moment?

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. President: I was a little bothered by the fact that Zelenskyy was saying, well, I have to get constitutional approval.

I mean, he's got approval to go into war, kill everybody, but he needs an approval to do a land swap because there'll be some land swapping going on.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Zolan -- ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS It reminds me, I mean, going back to that Oval Office meeting where he dressed down Zelenskyy.

Here, not as bad, but you still see him putting the onus on Zelenskyy, the person who was invaded, the person leading this country that was invaded by Russia.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: I mean, I guess the question for those of you who covered diplomacy is, how can you go into a complicated negotiation when you yourself don't understand who caused the war?

DAVID IGNATIUS: So, you know -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: You seem unusually sympathetic to the problems here, so go on.

DAVID IGNATIUS: I have been just so frightened that Donald Trump was about to obliterate Ukraine's sovereignty, and that could still happen.

This could still have a very bad outcome, but it didn't happen today.

You know, there're so many things about this conflict that he doesn't understand.

But there's one part that he clearly does, and that is the enormous loss of life.

He talks about it.

Every time he talks about Ukraine, he talks about the bloodbath.

He talks about the numbers dying every day, every month.

You know, I think he does feel that.

And when he says, I want to end this war, he means it.

You know, he didn't get to ceasefire that he wants, but I think it's still something he care about.

VIVIAN SALAMA: The other thing that's actually new that we've seen out of him, especially in the last week, is that he wants to loop in NATO allies.

He said it today after the press conference, and he also said it after Steve Witkoff, his envoy, came back from Moscow, where he immediately got on the phone with European allies and Ukraine.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: That goes actually something David was pointing out, which there is a responsibility in that.

In ordinary precedence, of course it's assumed that he would call his allies.

But this is a man who doesn't like NATO.

VIVIAN SALAMA: This is the same president who shunned the transatlantic alliance.

DAVID IGNATIUS: What I've been hearing in the last couple days from Europeans is a surprising degree of, you know, enthusiasm about Trump looping them in, but standing a little firmer than they feared he would.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Is that the soft bigotry of low expectations, or is that because they think he's actually going to get something done here?

DAVID IGNATIUS: I think they were afraid that he was about to sell Ukraine out.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Czechoslovakia-style.

DAVID IGNATIUS: They're reassured.

You know, the talk, you know, the last month among the commentary has been, this might be another Munich.

And, you know, today, we didn't see another Munich.