Trump has concluded his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and we’re now well into the full-on media and politician meltdown we all expected to follow.

Once again, President Trump didn’t followed the script tacitly imposed on him by the Swamp’s foreign policy elites and their legacy media cheering section when he appeared with Russian President Vladimir Putin at a joint press conference in Helsinki.

Cue the meltdown:

And then we have some truly unhinged treason allegations:

And, of course, this news cycle wouldn’t be complete without blackmail conspiracy speculation from a high-ranking Democratic official.

Left-leaning commentariat and elected/appointed officials reaching to mainstream calls of treason over a press conference they didn’t approve of with a foreign leader they only started worrying about in earnest about 2 years ago would be a lot more disturbing if it weren’t all so pitifully predictable.

Let’s just begin with the acknowledgement that there was never going to be any outcome from this new chapter of U.S.-Russia relations without Trump’s political opposition accusing him of being a Putin puppet, as I explained elsewhere.

And, to be fair, it’s worth a decent eyeroll that Trump won’t acknowledge that the Russian government tried to meddle in the 2016 election. The rule of thumb when dealing with a conniving operator like Putin is to not believe a word he says, after all. Plus, it does nothing but give his opposition an endless supply of tedious political ammo.

But, at the same time, given the actual level of sophistication or lack thereof involved in the operation, it might be better to not give Putin the satisfaction, as Sean Davis explains.

The rule of thumb in covering Trump, however, is not to get distracted by the tweets, the presser comments, and the off-the-cuff reactions. You have to stay focused on his actions and the actual policy results, or you’ll miss the important stuff, like the fact that Trump is still hawkish on Russia, despite the hullaballoo.

This is especially true when it comes to Trump’s foreign policy. When he’s breaking from decades of establishment consensus on diplomacy, the key is to wait for the results and then judge those. Monday-morning quarterback what was said at a joint press conference all you want, but it’s no indicator of what the United States’ approach to the Russian Federation will be under the Trump administration, nor whether that approach will bear fruit.

It’s truly confounding that so many in the news business have been tracking Donald Trump since he came down the escalator to announce his candidacy for president over three years ago and apparently still don’t get any of this.

Either that, or they understand the concept but still want to force POTUS into a cookie-cutter mold he’ll never fit, or they just want to drive up their click traffic, their social media numbers, and their cable news appearances by willfully ignoring it. My money’s on option #3.