No deal, no questions: Inside Trump’s ‘frightening’ Alaska showdown with Putin

U.S. President Donald Trump’s team left Alaska looking “ashen-faced” and “terrified” after a tense two-and-a-half hour meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday, sources say.

The summit, billed as a high-stakes discussion on the Ukraine conflict, ended abruptly with no ceasefire or peace agreement, and a planned lunch of halibut and filet mignon was cancelled. Trump and Putin spoke briefly at a press conference that lasted just 12 minutes—and neither leader took questions from the world’s press.

Observers described the mood among Trump’s aides as unusually grim. NBC News correspondent Peter Alexander reported that Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt appeared “stressed out and anxious,” while Special Envoy Steve Witkoff moved in and out of the room, visibly shaken. Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul called the scene a “bigger disaster than they are letting on.”

The summit began around 3:30pm ET and was expected to last six to seven hours. Instead, it ended after a fraction of that time, with Trump allowing Putin to speak first, which was a rare move for the former president. By the meeting’s conclusion, the two leaders’ handshake was reportedly stiff and businesslike, lacking the usual cordiality.

Despite claims of an “extremely productive meeting,” Trump admitted that no agreement was reached. “We didn’t get there,” he said, adding only that there was “a very good chance of getting there” in the future.

The closed-door talks, held at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, came amid criticism that Trump had granted Putin a symbolic victory by hosting him on U.S. soil for the first time in a decade without Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky in the room.

Sources close to the summit suggest that comments from Putin left the American delegation unsettled. MSNBC host Antonia Hylton described the aftermath: “A lot of the administration’s top officials looked ashen, almost frightened, after what they had seen behind closed doors.”

Trump and Putin’s meeting in Alaska offered a rare glimpse into a high-stakes diplomacy stage, but it also highlighted a growing sense of unease within the U.S. team and left observers questioning what exactly left them so rattled.