So what do we expect out of this upcoming summit? First of all, it's classic Trump to the media. Once he has all of this energy, yeah there was so much hair on fire and reporting and explaining, that he took all of this energy and then he refocused it, as he does. I've told you that 50% of persuasion is just keeping your attention, because whatever your attention is on, you will eventually convince yourself is more credible, more important than whatever else you were thinking of, because you're just focused on it. So now we're focused on this summit and the president has brought into focus, well let me tell you something else that connects a few dots.

Remember I kept telling you, I keep telling you for two years now or so, that the president likes to shake the box. Whenever the variables are not lined up in a way that's good for him, he'll shake the box. And if he still doesn't get what he wants, he'll shake again and he'll shake again. And I've said that only he can shake the box and he can do it as many times as he needs to until the variables light up the way he wants. And that other people can't shake the box, so they have a big disadvantage. They can't shake the box because they can't take the heat.

You watch the president shake the hell out of the Russia box by having the summit. And it didn't go exactly the way people planned. And what happened because he shook that box? What variables are different? There are some important variables that got shifted around in the box. Here's the most important variable. How important did you think it was a few years ago or even six months ago, the Russian cyber meddling? You probably thought it was important. But if I ask you to make a list of your top 20 things that you think are the important things in the world, where would Russia's cyber meddling and just Russia's bad acting in the world, where would that be in your top 20 just six months ago? Probably about that high.

Now I'm not going to argue that it should be higher in the priorities, but I will tell you that it is. So the president has taken this lower level, second tier priority in the public's mind, I'm not saying it's not important, I'm not saying that our experts are wrong about the incredible risk there is, I'm just saying that in the public's mind it just was sort of down the list somewhere. It was way after the economy, way after North Korea. And where is it right now? Top of the headlines. Is it more important because we're talking about it and focusing on it and Trump has created a lot of energy around it? Well it didn't get more important. It just got more attention.

And what does that do? It has hardened the American public's opinion against Putin. I'm sorry, yeah well half the public is against Trump. But at the same time, whether or not they're against Trump separately, the entire public, left and right, is against Putin and specifically against him messing with us. That level of energy, that variable is new. Trump shook the box until the public, left and right, lined up with him against an external threat.

Now he's not treating it as an external threat. He's playing it smarter. He's saying two things. Be our friend. Be our friend. Being our friend is great. It's great. You know the key, the proverbial carrot. Hey, it's a delicious carrot. I've got the best carrots. Our carrots are awesome. You should have a carrot. Would you like a carrot? So he's got the carrot part better than anybody's ever done it.

And remember the importance of contrast. It's not enough to say we'll hurt you if you don't do what we want. You also need the big contrast play, which is and if you do what we like, oh my God, we could change the world. You could be one of the greatest leaders of all time, Mr. Putin. Which is true, by the way. Completely true. Putin has this amazing place in the world right now where he can be, despite anything he's been accused of, true or not, he is the center of history right now. And he can either become one of the greatest leaders, even with his flaws, I'm not discounting any of the bad stuff. We all know what it is. We can all make our list of bad Putin behavior. But if he decides to go legit, if you will, and work with Trump on denuclearizing and is productive in the Middle East and all that, he becomes one of the greatest leaders in history. It will really be amazing. Trump has created that.

And if Putin had simply played well with us before, let's say a year ago or before Trump, would Putin have gotten as much credit? Not really. He just would have been a bad guy that we pushed into helping us somehow. Or he's just not even part of the important part of the story. You see, he's just a footnote. But Trump has elevated him to the center stage and put the entire focus of the American public on Putin. Putin now has something to gain and something to lose that just didn't exist before, at least not at that scale, not in that level of importance. But Trump has created an asset out of nothing. How many times have you heard me say that he has conjured up an asset out of nothing but psychology and persuasion? In which Putin has a huge thing to gain, being one of the most important leaders of all history if he partners with Trump. Or one of the biggest losers of all of history, because the president has also made it clear that he would be Putin's worst enemy.

What does he mean by that? It means what you think it means. It doesn't mean war in all likelihood, because I don't think we'd be that dumb. But does it mean that Putin's going to have a successful leadership for the rest of his time on this earth? It does not. Putin would not have a good rest of his life. And Trump would make sure that very, very cleanly and decisively, I believe. Nobody believes that Trump would forget about it if he gets screwed here. And nobody would feel bad if he returned the favor in a very aggressive way.

So we have this situation where the variables are now different. The American public is aligned against Putin. So if things went bad and the president said, look we're going to have to get super rough on Russia because of Putin, he's got the public on his side now, both left and right. How often does that happen? So the variables are not what they were. The variables even, because and here's the coincidence or not part, because the first summit was reported widely to be not good on a number of levels. That brought all the attention exactly where Trump needs it to set the table for the second meeting.

How would you like to be Putin and walk into the summit in October and have nothing to offer? Think about it. Imagine Putin's showing up in Washington and having nothing to offer. And imagine that it's been a few more months of bad behavior and he's just walking into the White House doing nothing for us. How is that meeting going to go? How's the rest of Putin's life going to go? Not so well. So yeah, it would make Putin look foolish.