Hello, I'm Adam Wren.

And I'm Dasha Burns. It is Tuesday, August 19th.

And this is the Playbook podcast. Good morning, Adam.

Morning, Dasha. You've been burning the midnight oil, talking to sources. And this morning, we've got a lot to talk about and unpack from yesterday's

historic meeting in the White House. That's right. Massive day at the White House yesterday

and just a huge week in the dog days of summer here. That's right. There's no real August

downtime. But let's get right to what's driving the day. We're sorting through the aftermath of a

series of high-stakes summits yesterday in D.C. meetings between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian

President Zelenskyy, between Trump and a handful of Europe's most powerful leaders, including

French President Emmanuel Macron, UK Prime Minister Kirstarmer, and German Chancellor Friedrich Mers,

and then all of the above. So just a number of moving pieces here, Dasha.

Walk us through kind of your top line takeaways from these meetings and kind of what stand

out to you. So a number of standouts just from observation today, right? First of all, the vibe

between President Trump and Zelensky could not have been more different than that first

disastrous Oval Office meeting. I mean, there was rapport, there was banter. He was even laughing

with J.D. Vance at one point, and you can remember the sort of blow up between the two of them during

that first meeting. And everyone that I talked to around the president, all of my sources,

validated that. They said it was night and day from that first meeting. And the vibes with

the European leaders were quite good as well. So overall, the optics of it, there was unity, there was camaraderie.

The repeated line was, it's team Europe and team America, you know, teaming up together.

And that's very much what the visuals indicated. So that's a huge factor here. And tone is important,

especially when it comes to President Trump.

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