For weeks, President Donald Trump and his aides have assured he was never actually fooled by Vladimir Putin.

When Trump – after years of saying warm things about the Russian president — finally did recently turn on the longtime US adversary, it had to be because Putin had somehow changed .

And now despite all those attempts to rewrite history, Trump walks into his most high-profile Putin meeting at risk of again looking like a dupe.

Granting Putin an audience on US soil was already a risk, if history was any guide, and the stakes have only risen since the announcement of the Alaska summit just a week ago – thanks to Trump himself.

Ahead of Friday’s meeting, Trump and the White House were initially careful to manage expectations. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt likened it to a

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