Trump caved spectacularly to Putin. Here's what might happen next
(CNN)For as long as history remembers Donald Trump, it will be a day that will live in infamy.
The President's summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki on Monday is already one of the most notorious moments in the tortured relations between Washington and Moscow.
Trump sides with Putin over US intelligence
Trump's humiliation is taking its place alongside John Kennedy's bruising at the hands of Nikita Khrushchev, and George W. Bush staring into Putin's eyes and getting a sense of his soul.
Like those moments in US-Russia summit lore, the events that unfolded Monday are likely to have significant and unpredictable political and geopolitical reverberations in the United States and around the world.
Trump's favoring of Putin's denial of election interference accusations leveled by the US intelligence community was not just the most abject display given by any President overseas, it may be the moment that finally validated claims that Trump prizes his own interests above those of America.
The most obvious question -- why did Trump cave so spectacularly to Putin -- is likely to remain cloudy going forward, at least unless special counsel Robert Mueller finds evidence the President is beholden to the Russian leader.
But there are going to be profound consequences in Washington and beyond.
Here is what may happen next.
Trump WILL fight back
In 1961, Kennedy emerged from a roughing up by Soviet leader Khrushchev in Vienna and admitted to James Reston of The New York Times that their meeting had been the worst thing in his life.
It's no surprise that Trump showed no similar self-awareness in a sympathetic interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News on Monday, but Kennedy's description of his humiliation would be a good summation of the 45th President's encounter with Putin.
Objectively, Trump has emerged from the summit a diminished figure.
He looked weak. He was obsequious to the stone-faced Russian leader and came across as unprepared and outmatched. He looked as far as it is possible to be from his own self-image as a bullying tough-as-nails dealmaker, the man who boasted at the Republican National Convention in 2016 that "I alone can fix it."
The myth of Trump as an American strongman may never recover.
The GOP's wrist-slap response to Trump's Russia explosion
It is already clear that the summit is a short-term political disaster for Trump. For a man who jealously guards his image, the mockery will sting and will provoke a backlash.
Top Republicans like House Speaker Paul Ryan, who normally don't criticize him, put distance between themselves and Trump.
"The President must appreciate that Russia is not our ally, there is no moral equivalence between the United States and Russia," Ryan said in a written statement.
Even Newt Gingrich, a Trump supporter, rediscovered his roots as an old Cold Warrior.
News Courtesy: www.cnn.com
