President Donald Trump is no stranger to criticism. Indeed the constant and often unhinged vituperation from the US liberal establishment actually seems to invigorate him. It certainly played a big part in winning him the White House.

But this week’s Helsinki meeting with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin has drawn flack not simply from the usual Establishment suspects but from Republican party supporters and even from within his own administration. It must be wondered if The Donald has not in fact overreached himself and if his normal off-the-cuff style has not only infuriated many Americans but also produced sly snickers among Putin and his Kremlin entourage.

Trump used his wrap-up press conference with the Russian president to launch an attack on those who are convinced that the Russians consistently interfered in the US presidential election, seeking to smear Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton while boosting the merits of Trump. Putin, who speaks reasonable English, seemed to be positively purring at Trump’s remarks. It might be thought that had he ordered any meddling in the American democratic process, he would have been squirming with embarrassment that Trump was showing himself so apparently partial to Russian interests.

The American leader might have addressed the allegations in more measured terms, but then The Donald doesn’t really do “measured”. But to use this international platform alongside the leader of a major rival power to accuse the FBI and the US intelligence community of getting their facts wrong was a grave and frankly insulting error. The “Russia-gate” allegations are a domestic issue. Trump can fulminate against the accusations all he wants when he is sitting in the Oval Office, but Helsinki, in front of the world’s media, standing right alongside Vladimir Putin, was simply not the place to voice these views.

This error was a disappointing end to an interesting European tour in which he banged heads together at NATO and told the astonished British premier Theresa May that the EU was forcing a lousy Brexit deal on the UK and that she should abandon the talks and instead sue Brussels. It was quintessential Trump. There was an expectation that his encounter with Putin in the Finnish capital would be equally surprising but in a far more positive way than it turned out.

In his initial statement he did indeed sound statesmanlike, insisting that he was talking to Putin as a continuation of “the proud tradition of bold American diplomacy” and that their meeting was only the beginning of a longer process of engagement. “Nothing would be easier politically than to refuse to meet, to refuse to engage. But that would accomplish nothing,” he said.

But it was when he answered an elections question from a Reuters reporter that Trump launched into his attack on the Washington probe into Russian electoral interference. Read in context, he actually said that both Russia and the United States had made mistakes which had added to their disintegrated relations. But the President has surely learned by now that context is the last thing that interests a largely hostile Western media. Praising the US intelligence establishment while damning their investigations was plain dumb. Up until now, Trump’s political genius has been to shoot from the hip and walk away unharmed. Helsinki, far from being something of a triumph, has actually dangerously exposed his back to a host of his enemies.