.Bloggers note: Always Interesting Body Language also with Transcript below
VIDEO .
In this video, Dr. G, a clinical and forensic psychologist, offers an insightful body‑language analysis of President Trump and President Putin during two pivotal moments: their initial tarmac greeting and the post‑summit press appearance. At the tarmac, Dr. G breaks down how Trump's warm, welcoming gestures and subtle invite into the presidential limo contrasted with Putin’s restrained yet confident composure, revealing a curious blend of camaraderie and underlying tension. As they transition to the press briefing, a marked shift emerges: Trump's demeanor shifts from affable host to noticeably disappointed, while observers detect “definite signs of irritation” and a more guarded posture between the two. Join Dr. G as he decodes these powerful nonverbal cues and what they might tell us about the after-meeting mood—especially how a promising start gave way to unmet expectations.
On August 15, 2025, President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin met at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, marking their first in-person summit since Trump's reelection. Despite a grand red-carpet entrance, military flyovers, and a “three-on-three” meeting format that included Secretary of State Marco Rubio and envoy Steve Witkoff on the U.S. side (and Russia's Sergey Lavrov and Yuri Ushakov), no ceasefire deal was reached to end the Russia-Ukraine war. Trump described the meeting as “very productive” and hinted at potential future talks—possibly in Moscow—while Putin spoke of increased economic cooperation and maintaining Russia’s security concerns. Both leaders claimed progress on unspecified points but provided no details, and neither took questions from the press.
During the Alaska summit, several moments instantly went viral online. The dramatic red-carpet arrival—complete with a B-2 stealth bomber and F-22 flyovers—as Putin stepped onto U.S. soil drew widespread attention, especially when Trump applauded him warmly, sparking both astonishment and memes. Perhaps even more striking was the visual of Trump giving Putin a ride in “The Beast,” his heavily armored presidential limousine—this unprecedented gesture reinforced the summit’s surprising tone—and was shared endlessly across news and social platforms.
TRANSCRIPT
Hey everybody, Dr. G here. I'm a
clinical and forensic psychologist as well as a body language expert. And today we're going to be analyzing the behavior and body language of President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin during their peace summit. Before we get started, a couple of quick things. One, I wanted to make sure you know this is not a psychological evaluation of any kind. These are just my opinions. In addition to that, I do want to remind you to like and subscribe if you want to see more content just like this. All right, let's go. So, what we're going to be watching first is President Trump waiting for President Putin to walk over to him so they can walk together on the literal red carpet. Let's just jump right in. So, you saw a very brief lick of the lips and then you saw the smile. President Trump, I think, is actually excited about this meeting. It looks like he's in high spirits. We're not seeing any signs of dominant body language yet. One thing that President Trump has a tendency to do is to turn his nose up to people if he feels like he's superior to them. We're not seeing that in his default body language yet, but we're going to watch and see if it He's also facing President Putin as he walks over. He's not looking away or waiting for him to get there. This is once again an overture to feel warm, to feel like he is welcome there. So, body language wise, President Trump is actually doing quite a lot, trying to make sure that President Putin feels welcome as he walks over to him. You can also see how open his body is. He's not doing anything that appears uncomfortable. It looked like President Putin just nodded at President Trump and then it looked like he gave a thumbs up. There's the nod. Looks like maybe a thumbs up or some kind of hand signal. And then he reaches over before he actually gets to them. This shows that there appears to be genuine warmth between the two of them. This appears to be a meeting where neither one of them, at least yet, is showing any overt signs of trying to display power within their body language. It looks like more that they're trying to appear welcoming and they're trying to appear connected. Now, I do want you to watch something very important about the way that President Trump does his handshake. Now, what you're seeing right here is a very normal handshake, which may seem obvious. That may not seem remarkable in any way. However, President Trump is notorious for yanking people towards him. He does this to world leaders, too. He's not doing that right now, which means he's not doing any overt signs of trying to do some sort of power play. You may have seen there were mutual arm touches. We tend to do that with people that we like. We tend to do that when we feel connected to somebody. So, President Putin touched President Trump's arm and then vice versa. We tend to mimic people when we want to get along. So, the idea that President Putin did it first, President Trump responded. This really speaks to the fact that they do actually want to get along and they and you're seeing what appears to be two very genuine smiles. It's a very interesting dynamic between the two of them because neither one of them has done any overt signs of being the one that's in power, so to speak. So, that's Both have a similar rhythm and cadence to the way that they're walking. All of that seems very normal. When they're speaking, both of them are using their hands a little bit to emphasize continued signs that he wants to get along. Having more physical touch is a way to connect with people. So the idea that President Trump is very genuinely trying to connect with President Putin right now seems very very obvious. President, will you stop killing So obviously he just signaled that he couldn't hear what was being said. I'd seen pundits talking about that he looked uncomfortable, but he doesn't look uncomfortable to me. I just think he has no real reaction to it. He's basically just saying and signaling, I'm not going to answer your questions or I'm not going to respond. I don't know how proficient his English is. So I obviously he could hear the word Ukraine, but I'm not even sure that he could fully understand what was being said. But point being, there was no sign of discomfort when that was said by the reporter. He just seemed indifferent. And as you can see, after that was said, President Trump re leans over, starts smiling, wants to make sure that he can maintain this connection, and then they're just going to move on. President, how can the US? And if you watch President Trump's mouth right here, this is a look of disapproval. He doesn't like the journalist calling out questions like right there? A look of disapproval. He's frustrated by what's going on right now. 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And if you look, they're doing basically the same thing with their hands. They both steeple. They both do small steepling. Steepling is basically this. If you're the CEO, the head, if you're the leader, oftentimes you do this because that makes you the expert. Steepling oftentimes signifies this. So you can see both of them doing that. Neither one of them is doing it strongly. But this is actually very common with President Trump. He does this when he sits often times. And it it appears that President Putin does something similar. So their body language is actually quite similar right here, which I think is really Now, one thing you're not seeing is either of them doing any sort of big body language that makes them seem like the most powerful person in the room. They're both basically doing the same thing. Now, we're going to listen to their statements after the meeting. We're going to see if the body language changed. All right, let's just jump Now, you're already seeing that President Trump has his mouth bunched up doing this. Now, he typically does this when he's feeling frustrated or stressed. So, I'm going to guess that this did not quite go the way he wanted. Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, You're also seeing some of this. He tends to do that when he's frustrated. We're going to get some more of that in a little bit. But if you watch President Trump's face, you're already seeing that this is not something that matches the energy we saw before. negotiations have been held in a constructive atmosphere We have very thorough negotiations were quite useful. I would like to thank once again my American counterpart. The proposal to travel out here to Alaska. It only makes sense that we've met here now the way that President Putin talks is pretty standard for giving a prepared speech. He raises his eyebrows at times when needed, but you're not seeing any real emotion there. you're just seeing someone providing a speech. Now, President Trump, on the other hand, I want you to keep an eye out on him because he doesn't sit still very well. He doesn't always he's not always the most patient person when it comes to other people speaking. So, he does move a lot. You're going to see that in just Our countries though separated by the ocean have close neighbors. So when we've met when I came out of the good afternoon dear neighbor very good and to see you alive and you can see now President Trump is smiling right now and that does seem genuine. It's not that whatever happened was catastrophic. I just think that he appears frustrated once it closes up on him. We're going to get more into that. But they're still trying to connect. They still look towards each other. That's all pretty normal body language for two people that are getting along. So, I don't think that somehow the relationship has changed after this meeting. I just think that President Trump didn't necessarily get what he wanted out of it. I think that is very neighborly. We're going to skip ahead a couple of minutes because there's no major changes in body language, certainly not from Putin and and President Trump. He still continues to move around a lot as you would expect because that's typically Very much, Mr. President. That was very profound. And I will say that I believe we had a very productive meeting. There were many, many points that we agreed on. Most of them, I would say, a couple of big ones that we haven't quite gotten there, but we've made some headway. so look at his face right now compared to the way he looked on the tarmac. Obviously, it's much later in the day, so he may be tired, but he looks disappointed. This is not the face. This is not the beaming that he typically does when he's had a big victory. So right now, it's not once again that it was catastrophic, but I think he's There's no deal until there's a deal. I will call up NATO in a little while. I will call up uh the various people that I think are appropriate and I'll of course call up President Zalinsky and tell them about today's meeting. It's ultimately up to them. They're going to have to agree with what Marco and Steve and some of the great people from the Trump administration who've come here, Scott. And so you see that he does this when he's frustrated. We've seen him do this before. So when you see him in meetings talking about Epstein, for example, you see some of that. There's a frustration that he's experiencing right now as he's talking about this because he's not out here announcing some massive victory. He's saying it's ongoing. We're going to continue to talk about this. great people from the Trump administration who've come here. Scott that's the look right there. John Ratcliffe, thank you very much. But we have uh some of our really great leaders. They've been doing a phenomenal job. We also have some tremendous Russian uh business representatives here and I think you know everybody wants to Another thing that he's not doing is raising his eyebrows as he talks because when we do that it brings attention to our face. He doesn't feel any major victories here. So, he's not once again bringing attention to what he's saying. He's speaking a lot more quietly. You're not seeing the arms out at all. When President Trump is feeling excited about something, when he's really going at it, he moves his arm. He moves his arms out. He emphasizes as strongly as he can. We're hearing almost no emphasis right now, which is highly unusual for him. with us, we become the hottest country anywhere in the world in a very short period of time. And uh we look forward to that. We look forward to dealing. we're going to try and get this over with. We we really made some great And that may be true, but what we're seeing right now is that it wasn't a victory. It wasn't an outright victory. It was just progress. And that's not what he wanted. So, I do think once again, he appears disappointed. He appears frustrated. Not necessarily at anybody, but just at the fact that he didn't get what he wanted. relationship with President Putin, with Vladimir. We had uh many many uh tough meetings, good meetings. We were uh interfered with by the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax that made it a little bit tougher to deal with, but he understood it. See, as soon as he brings up Russia, Russia, Russia, he's back in his element for a second. He seems a little more fluid then, slightly more animated, but when he's talking about this meeting, it's just with by the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax that made it a little bit tougher to deal with, but he understood it. Uh, I think he's probably seen things like that during the course of his career. He's seen he's seen it all. But we had to put up with the Russia Russia Russia hoax. He knew it was a hoax and I knew See, you're getting a little bit more emphasis out of him. He feels a little bit more excited talking about these kinds of things because this this is really in his wheelhouse. But what was done was very criminal, but it made it harder for us to deal as a country in terms of the business and all of the things that we'd like to have and as you can see right here, President Trump is facing Putin. The goal of that is so that Putin will feel that connection to see that he's facing him, that he feels that connection. President Trump really does focus on relationships. That's a big part of how he operates. And the the gesture right here was a way to try to make sure that that connection is still open. Thank you very much, Vladimir. Oh, that's an interesting one. I don't know. I'll get a little heat on that one, but I uh I could see it possibly happening. Thank you very much, Vladimir. And thank you all. Thank you. So, once again, we got a normal handshake out of President Trump. There was no sort of power plays there. And really in terms of body language, there weren't any power plays during this this segment either from either one of them Thank you. Thank you so much. And there's that look again of disappointment from President Trump. Look at this this expression on his So, we'll go ahead and wrap things up. One thing I do want to point out about this handshake that's also worth noting is that as we look at whether or not people are trying to assert their dominance and assert their power. Neither one of them, as I've talked about before, is turning their nose up to the other one. Nobody's doing anything that overtly suggests they're trying to grab power right here or that they want to appear more powerful. So that's interesting that neither one of them did anything like that in either the tarmac meeting or this. But what we did see is that President Trump and President Putin went from seeming like they had a great connection. President Trump seemed very enthusiastic, very energetic to appearing much more deflated by the end. He seemed frustrated. He seemed disappointed. He walked away with progress but not the victory that I think that he had envisioned. If you have any thoughts about this, please let me know in the comments below. And if there's anything else you want me to analyze, I'd also like to hear about that. Last thing before we get finished up is I do want to remind you to like and subscribe if you want to see more content just like
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