It says here I'm supposed to ask you if your refrigerator is running.

On Friday, Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin will conduct their first face-to-face meeting. Around the world, the expectations appear to be that we are all boned.

“I worry a little about this meeting because Putin is going to walk into the room very well prepared, and I’m not certain Trump will come into that room prepared,” said Steven Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and career diplomat who now is a senior foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington.

There is apparently, according to national security adviser H.R. McMaster, "no specific agenda." And Trump's notorious lack of interest in briefing materials is presenting a challenge to those seeking to prepare him; they can write down all the detail they want, he's not going to care or even remember it. Putin is regarded as a skilled negotiator, and Trump is regarded as, ahem, an idiot with a bank account.

The president often doesn’t read the usual briefing books and relies on in-person briefings, the officials said, so aides also have written a list of tweet-length sentences that summarize the main points Trump could bring up with Putin. [...] Advisors including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary James N. Mattis are trying to carefully script Trump’s interaction to head off any attempt by Putin to manipulate the encounter to his advantage, the U.S. officials said.

That's where we're at now: Reducing the main points of U.S.-Russian contention to "tweet-length" sentences in a last-ditch effort to get Trump to remember anything he's been told or, at least, get him up to speed on the things his own nation would rather not concede to Putin on the first date. And unless those sentences contain "Trump," even that's not likely to get far. (Peace in Europe may or may not hinge on NATO renaming itself the North Atlantic Trump Organization, thus securing Donald’s full attention and interest.)

It is probable that Trump's team will see the meeting as a success if Trump refrains from blurting out his own PIN number. As for whatever else might happen, we'll have to wait to hear the details from the press. The Russian press, that is; as with the last Trump-Russia meeting, Team Trump isn't likely to let our own team in on the details.