I’m shocked that the public is shocked that Trump would stand shoulder to shoulder with Putin and criticize his own country. What did you expect him to do? That’s what he does, metaphorically speaking, every day.
The whole point of the meeting was to make it clear that the US is now a thuggish revisionist state that is determined to extort a pound of flesh from the liberal democrat weenies in the EU. In that sense, the meeting was a roaring success.
Will Fox News, the base, and the GOP leadership ultimately follow his lead on this? Given what has happened to date, why would you doubt it?