Trump Admits He Might Walk Out on Putin Mid-Meeting

It’s the art of the deal.

President Donald Trump admitted to Fox News’ Bret Baier that if things don’t go well during the high-stakes summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska, he might “walk.”

“If it doesn’t, you walk?” Baier asked.

“I would walk, yeah,” Trump said.

Baier joined Trump on Air Force One en route to Alaska, where the summit will take place Friday.

Trump said on the campaign trail that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war on day one of his presidency. He has expressed increasing frustration over his inability to strike a deal. In July, he threatened to impose further sanctions on Russia if it did not agree to a peace deal within 50 days but has since walked back the timeline.

On Wednesday, Trump confessed that he would not be able to convince Putin to stop targeting Ukrainian civilians.

“I guess the answer to that is ‘no,’” he said. “Because I’ve had this conversation ... I’ve had a lot of good conversations with him [Putin]. Then I go home and I see that a rocket hit a nursing home or a rocket hit an apartment building, and people are lying dead in the streets.”

Although Trump has long touted his ability to negotiate with Putin, he admitted this week that investigations into Russia’s interference with elections in the United States, which the president refers to as “the Russian hoax,” have “put a strain on the relationship.”

Trump’s aides also have low expectations, calling the Friday peace summit in Anchorage a “listening exercise.” It will be the first meeting between a U.S. president and Putin since Russia’s invasion in 2022.

“What comes after that meeting is up to President Trump, and that’s part of the reason he is going,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox & Friends on Thursday. “He has incredible instincts, and he wants to sit down and look the Russian president in the eye and see what progress can be made to move the ball forward to end this brutal war.”