Transcripts For MSNBC The Last Word With Lawrence ODonnell 2

Jeopardy. Israel bombs gaza days after a new government takes shape. What led to this latest flareup of violence. Welcome to the lead. Im pamela brown in for jake tapper, and we begin today with our world lead, and this historic highstakes summit president President Joe Biden and russian president vladimir putin. The summit lasted roughly three hours with both leaders describing it as constructive and positive. They said there were no threats or ultimatums, and putin called biden balanced, professional and experienced. I did what i came to do. The tone of the entire meetings, i guess it was a total of four hours, was what was was good, positive. There wasnt any any strident action taken. Where we disagreed, disagreed, stated where it was and where he disagreed it was stated but it was not done in a hyperbolic atmosphere. Translator the meeting was actually very efficient. It was substantive. It was specific. And it was aimed at achieving results. One of those results, axes from the u. S. And russia will return to their diplomatic posts, but when it came to controversial everyone use like Cyber Security, human rights and ukraine, putin remained defensive. Cnns Kaitlan Collins reports from the site of the summit in geneva. Reporter President Biden summing up his first summit with President Putin. I did what i came here to do. Reporter the do you met for three hours in geneva and cited progress on their way out. Translator the talks were quite constructive. The tone of the entire meetings, i guess it was a total of four hours, was was good, positive. Reporter but it was clear that divisions on Critical Issues like Cyber Attacks and human rights remained. The bottom line is i told president pete than we need to have some basic rules of the road we can all abide by. Reporter putin summed up the summit first, praising biden while denying any role in recent Ransomware Attacks and brushing off concerns about jailing his political opponents. Translator they have said that most of the Cyber Attacks in the world are carried out from the cyber realm of the United States. Reporter biden said he pressed putin on multiple fronts and would continue to do so. I also told him that no president of the United States could keep faith with the American People if they did not speak out to defend our democratic values, to stand up for the universal and fundamental freedoms that all men and women have in our view. Thats just part of the downavrks our country. Reporter biden expressing confidence that putin would not continue to ratchet up tensions with the u. S. The last thing he wants now is a cold war. Reporter the two agreed to send their respective ambassadors back to their countries in an attempt to establish guardrails on Cyber Attacks. I talked about the proposition that certain Critical Infrastructure should be off limits to attack, period. By cyber or any other means. Reporter at times biden rebuked his russian counterpart after he acquitted jailing political opponents to arresting rioters who stormed the capitol. As to who is killing whom or throwing whom in jail, people came to the u. S. Congress with political demands. 400 people. My response is kind of what i communicated, that i think thats a thats a ridiculous comparison. Reporter biden saying they will know in three to six months if there can be a productive dialogue but growing visibly action when asked if it would real to real change from the russian confident leader. Why are you so confident hell change his behavior, mr. President . How confident are you . What do you when did i say i was confident . I said i said what i said was lets get it straight. I said what will change the behavior is that the rest of the world reacts and diminishes standing in the world. I owe my last questioner an apology. I shouldnt have been such a wiseguy with the answer that i gave. Reporter now, pam, back to what was actually discussed Behind Closed Doors at this summit when the came to the Cyber Attacks, President Biden told that is there were no threats made as they were meeting, but he said that the u. S. Is fully capable of responding with its own Cyber Attacks and he believes the russian president knows that. Kaitlan, stay with us. Lets bring in cnn chief International Correspondent Clarissa Ward, abby philip. Clarissa, lets start with you. Boyden and putin talked about this meeting positively but biden said hes not confident putin will change his behavior. What was your takeaway . I think none of us should expect President Putin to change his behavior. Hes modeled himself as an adversely to the west and that wont change. The me terrific expectation that we were given by people who watch and follow the creme lip closely ahead of the summit was they were hoping for a relationship that was respectful but hostile. No one is talking about adjusting fundamental behaviors but what they sang from the same hymn sheet is the element of predictability in the relationship with the hopes that a further degradation of relations can be prevented and given some of the areas that they outlined there talking about syria, humanitarian corridor, iran nuclear negotiations, afghanistan, a potential prisoner swap die hog, Cyber Security dialogue, it does appear that possibly, if both sides are committed to it, there could be room for an improvement in the relationship, but i dont think either side is expecting anyone to dramatically change their behavior. This is about averting a further deterioration. And as President Biden said we wont know more until the next six months, right . Ambassador, we dont know what will actually come from this meeting until we see how these working groups meet together and what comes out of that. Biden said that he raised human rights issues, of course, like the Opposition Leader Alexei Navalny and when asked about this putin turned it right back on the u. S. Translator look at the streets of america. Every single day there are shootings and killings. You dont have time to do the math of those shot dead after the murder or the killing of the africanamerican and black lives matter ensued. We sympathize with the americans, but we do not wish that this kind of thing should happen on our territory. President biden called this a ridiculous comparison, but what do you make of this moment . I think President Biden was exactly right, a ridiculous comparison, but what you said earlier is important, pamela, and that there will be a way to measure if theres anything good coming out of this. They were remarkably specific. I think President Putin was specific and i thought President Biden was surprisingly so on listing the number of things that he had raised with the putin, like 16 parts of the from a frost United States that should be off limits. Including energy and water. Energy and water, talking about Election Interference, someone mentioned the humanitarian quarters. They also mentioned ukraine, of some interest to me. Of course. And im very glad to hear them talking about the possibility of the United States playing a bigger role there in ukraine, so i was impressed with at least President Bidens specific list of actions. And are you actually hopeful that anything will come out of it . Hopeful is too strong. I think theres a lot to be skeptical about when youre dealing with the russians. Mmhmm. However, if in six months we see a a group of people sitting down talking about strategic stability. Talking about nuclear weapons, talking about the new technologies that President Biden talked about, and he said they got fairly specific about Rapid Response times. They are talking about very fast weapons, so apparently they got pretty specific. If those translate into some real talks that get to real discussions and negotiations on a new s. T. A. R. T. Treating that they got five years that goes pretty quickly, that would be a good sign. And as you mentioned one of the topics, abby, was Election Interference. President biden said he brought that up and told pete continue it happens again there will be action. The bottom line as we know theres already been action from the u. S. On that front and it hasnt deterred russian behavior. Is that enough . Yeah. I think biden knows that its not enough. Hes pretty pretty transparent that this was a warning that he knows is probably going to fall on deaf ears to some extent, but its one that he felt needed to be said, both as a former contrast with the Prior Administration but also as he said not just in the context of Election Interference but also on human rights as a statement of American Values about what he expects out of russia. I dont think the white house believes that putin is is suddenly going to throw up his hands and say hey, were not going to do this anymore but the idea that an american president would allow it to go forward without challenging it and in the case of former President Trump taking putins version of events, its something that i think the Biden Administration felt that they could not let that stand. Reporter kaitlan, the white house wanted to keep expectations low. Biden repeatedly said his Goal Bass Stability and predictability from russia. Does it appear to you that boyden got that . I do think that they tried to keep the expectations low because they knew going into this they werent going walk out of this with a 180 in putins behavior, but the question is what will happen down the road . Hes not changed his behavior down the road before. We saw this when it comes to the Solar Winds Hack which was responded to with u. S. Sanctions and everything that followed there, and yet we know that that behavior from russia continued. Its not just in addition to the Ransomware Attacks that the white house says it being done by criminal groups based in russia and russia is harboring those, of course, and would want to stop them if they wanted to. Thats the thinking inside the white house, so i think the ultimate question about whether or not they change their behavior really remains to be seen and if they modify in a way because they know its a different president in the white house who does take a different approach than what we saw from the predecessor. Putin was dealing with someone very different the last four years but, still, there were sanctions that happened under that, and. Has said that they will continue to do that, if necessary. The question is if the sanctions actually deter russian aggression and that behavior. One thing that is really notable that came out of this that could have been real bad is the fact that the ambassadors will go back to the post. The respective ambassadors to the u. S. And russia have been back in their home country, pam, for the last several months after tensions got really high between the u. S. And russia in april and they were going to go back, they said, they never did before the summit actually happened and now putin said and the white house confirmed that they will be returning to their countries. Certainly some progress on that front. Clariesia, this Morning Biden made reference to the u. S. And russia as two great powers. This type of language obviously elevates moscow status. Do you think that that was intentional on bidens part to say what petein wanted to hear and set a more positive tone heading into the day . I think i think President Biden made several conciliatory gestures to President Putin ahead of this conference. One of them was referring to him as a worthy adversely. He called him bright, i believe, and so he also said in the Press Conference that he gave after the nato summit in brussels, he talked about the idea, that you know, ukraine was not on track yet to join nato, that that is not something thats going to happen imminently. That would be very important for the russians to have heard, and back in may the Biden Administration actually waved sanctions on this nordstream pipeline, a concern for many people in the u. S. Administration, not seen as just a concession to germany but also as a way of trying to diffuse the situation slightly with the russians and perhaps make it clear that the agenda is not one of hostility, and we heard that again from President Biden today. He said, quote, my agenda is not against russia. Its for america. Its not against russia. Thats a distinction. I dont think he was successful in persuading President Putin that have because if you listen to points Press Conference he said again and again the u. S. Sees russia as an enemy, and the goal is not to strengthen russia but to contain it. This has always been very much the russian mindset, particularly, of course, in the last ten years or so, and i i dont think that thats changed, but i do think that with small gestures and words there was an attempt to pave the way for a more positive conversation from the Biden Administration. Mr. Ambassador, do you agree . I agree, although i would say that several of those steps were not taken. For example, the nordstream waiver, the waiver that allows nordstream apparently to go forward. I dont think that was a concession to the russians. I think that was an attempt to shore up an ally. In my own view it was a mistake. I think they should have continued the sanctions on nordstream, but i can understand them wanting to have a better relationship with the germans and that was the motivation. That said, i dont think there was an intent to be hostile to the russians or to President Putin. I think it was cord fall. It was businesslike, and that was a good thing. Abby, you had mentioned the comparison with the helsinki summit. How much do you think that this summit was about setting a new tone . Yeah. With President Putin and just laying out, because you heard President Biden talk about, you know, telling putin about the more or less and values and founding of this country. How much of this do you think was about setting a new tone . Yeah, i think a lot of it was. The tone was maybe, you know, 30 of the picture here. I think the rest of it really was just trying to hammer out some very discreet details that they wanted to get some kind of, you know, agreement to move forward on so that they could say coming out of this, that this wasnt just about the optics and smoke and mirrors. You got a sense from putin in his Press Conference that he believed that this was more or less all business and for joe biden thats a big deal. As you know, pam, joe biden is a people person. He likes to kind of, you know, do the small talk thing, but this was a pretty businesslike environment. It was efficient. It went fairly quickly for these types of meetings, and its because the United States wanted to have certain things, those 16 targets that they want to take off the table. That was very explicit and deliberate and concrete, something to come out of all of this, not just the idea that if theres a tonal change, that part was pretty obvious, and i think in some cases from the putin side maybe a little bit welcome. He understands biden hand how he operates and biden is a seasoned actor on the world stage. Just the fact that putin brought up bidens mom and biden made reference to that again and biden call it colloquial. All right. Thank you all so much. Well, much more on the summit, including President Bidens warning to future about top Credit Lynn Creditic Alexei Navalny. Thats next. Ee for herself that new Dove Breakage remedy gives damaged hair the strengthth it needs. Even with repeated combing hair treated with dove shows 97 less breakage. Strong hair with new Dove Breakage remedy. One, two one, two, three only pay for what you need with customized Car Insurance from Liberty Mutual shows 97 less breakage. Nothing rhymes with Liberty Mutual. 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