From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barbarale. This is the Daily.

Today, during their historic summit, President Trump, standing next to President Putin,

challenged the conclusion of his own government that Russia interfered in the U.S. elections.

They think it's Russia, Trump said.

I don't see any reason why it would be.

It's Tuesday, July 17th.

Julie Davis, what's the main question? What's your main question going into this summit on Monday?

Well, the main question is really, you know, what is Trump going to try to get out of this?

And is he in this opportunity that he has to sit down with Putin going to actually bring up some of the big issues in the relationship?

Primarily the fact that Russia interfered in the presidential election, but also Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea, the poisons of people written that Russia has been accused of carrying out,

is the president going to actually press him on these things or is it going to be all about, you know, friendliness and reaching out, which is how the president basically seemed to be approaching this in the days leading up to the meeting.

Right. And all this is coming just three days after these latest indictments from the special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, indictments of Russian government officials, which left it essentially undeniable that Russia meddled in the 2016 election, and that it was orchestrated by Putin and his government.

Right. I mean, this was always going to be a topic of conversation at this meeting. He said that he was going to ask him about it, even before we knew that these indictments were going to happen.

But certainly once they came down on Friday, it completely sort of changed the cast of the summit and was this going to change the president's attack on this, his approach to Putin on the issue, or was he going to do what he's done in the past, was essentially to ask the question.

But when Putin has denied it, you know, he's basically moved on from it and the fact that the indictments came down on Friday made let's just move on just really impossible.

Right.

So what happens as this day begins in Helsinki that gives us some idea of what the answer will be this time.

So for his part, the president started the day with a series of fiery tweets. President Trump, as he is want to do, starts tweeting, quote our relationship with Russia has never been worse thanks to many years of US foolishness and stupidity.

And now the rigged witch hunt, which of course is his way of referring to the Mueller investigation.

So right off the bat, he's essentially parroting or projecting the Putin narrative, the Russian narrative, which is that it's the United States that is responsible for the difficulties in the relationship.

It's the United States that's been at fault that we haven't pursued a better and warmer relationship with Russia and it's time to change that.

And so that was the going in posture and very quickly within an hour, I think the Russian foreign ministry retweeted the president of United States and said we agree.

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