"And I guess we're not officially going to call it a summit, they're going to meet. Summits are very elaborate affairs with breakout groups of officials at all levels of government talking about, I mean, the classic summit, you know, commerce, culture, cultural exchanges, military matters, all of that, both, you know, the State Department, the Defense Department, their people all get together and issue communiques or have meetings or all of that. This seems to be just head to head, Trump and Putin, you know, in a room, oiled up, you know, chairs, chairs, you know, you're going to throw chairs at each other, you know, no, no referee, ultimate fighting. Two things about this. One is that it comes at the time that we, that the tariffs are now going, the presidentially ordered tariffs are now going into effect. And they have a particular effect on Russia. Because not only are we going to have a particular effect on Russia, we're going to have a particular effect on Russia. Do we have a tariff on Russia, but there are tariffs on Russian goods that go to other countries, particularly India, that are going to be incredibly punitive toward the Russians. And Trump has that in his pocket as he goes to talk to Putin about changing his course in the, you know, sort of the warfare with Ukraine."

"Trump went out of his way to say, let's bring this war to an end. Remember, at the outset of the administration, when the first trip to Europe, the Munich conference, Secretary of Defense Pete Hagseth was saying, of course, Ukraine's not going to ever become a NATO member. Then we've had comments from the administration saying, well, a peace deal would recognize Russian territorial gains, right, especially in Crimea, which Russia annexed a decade ago, and then probably also in the four provinces that Russia claims sovereignty over, yet has not completely conquered militarily."

"Trump went out of his way to say, let's bring this war to an end. Remember, at the outset of the administration, when the first trip to Europe, the Munich conference, Secretary of Defense Pete Hagseth was saying, of course, Ukraine's not going to ever become a NATO member. Then we've had comments from the administration saying, well, a peace deal would recognize Russian territorial gains, right, especially in Crimea, which Russia annexed a decade ago, and then probably also in the four provinces that Russia claims sovereignty over, yet has not completely conquered militarily."

"In the midst of that, we had Wyckoff travel first to the Middle East, where he visited Gaza with Ambassador Mike Huckabee and met with Israeli officials regarding the food situation in the Gaza Strip and perhaps next moves on the ground as well. And then we were surprised when we learned that he was tacking on a trip to Moscow. First, it was unclear whether he would meet with Putin at all. It did turn out that he met with Putin yesterday. The meeting was about three hours. That's typical for a Wyckoff-Putin meeting. Putin does most of the talking, I think. And the Russian government released a statement saying that it was a productive meeting. And that was the same statement Trump issued on True Social. What does this mean? Well, it means that we had this news that Trump and Putin intend to meet at some point in the future. Russia says that could happen as soon as next week, that they're looking at a location. I remain slightly skeptical. We'll have to see. We also have to see what Trump does tomorrow."

"In the midst of that, we had Wyckoff travel first to the Middle East, where he visited Gaza with Ambassador Mike Huckabee and met with Israeli officials regarding the food situation in the Gaza Strip and perhaps next moves on the ground as well. And then we were surprised when we learned that he was tacking on a trip to Moscow. First, it was unclear whether he would meet with Putin at all. It did turn out that he met with Putin yesterday. The meeting was about three hours. That's typical for a Wyckoff-Putin meeting. Putin does most of the talking, I think. And the Russian government released a statement saying that it was a productive meeting. And that was the same statement Trump issued on True Social."

"The test case I'm looking at is the Michigan Senate race and the primary in Michigan. It's an open seat. Mike Rogers, who barely lost in 2004 is going to be the Republican nominee. He's, he has a clear path to the nomination, but it's a three way race on the democratic side. And the, the, it's very interesting. You have one of the candidates is the state Senator Mallory McMorrow, Mallory, McMorrow, who made it kind of went viral for some speech she gave, I think on trans rights in the state legislature or state Senate."

"By the way, so to move on, from this interesting stuff is going on in the Democratic Party primary in Washington state, seems to indicate that the move to the right in Seattle after the total catastrophe of Seattle in the wake of COVID and Black Lives Matter, which led to the election of a bunch of local political figures who were more moderate than the people who had been running the city during its worst days. They're now up for reelection and that the early indicators are that they are being displaced by more radical neo-Mamdani types in Seattle."