And this is how high stakes diplomacy works. You lot go on and on about the symbolic stuff (like red carpets) but magically forget how the deals are made. You offer the carrot, then hint at the stick.

Why give him the carrot? We didn't get anything out of this. Putin got the photo op, the red carpet, the press conference - all things that are enormously valuable to him.

Trump got nothing. There was nothing that happened at that meeting that couldn't have happened in a low-level interaction of foreign ministers. You don't need to be feting Putin to make a hint at the stick. There was zero reason to give Putin the propaganda win and to break the diplomatic isolation, and we got nothing for it.

This is not how diplomacy works. When part of your strategy is diplomatic isolation, you don't invite the head of state of the country that you're trying to diplomatically isolate to a freakin' summit unless they offer you some concessionary positions as a condition of the summit.