Russia talks, Trumps lips move

As with DPRK, the point of objections isn't (or shouldn't be) to the existence of talking to the Russians. We have substantive diplomatic issues with which we should be talking to them, leaving aside the questions of hacking and election and news meddling. The people making this argument, "that why are they mad that we're talking" typically suggest no similar argument is valid for Iran, which makes it hypocritically stupid. It is possible to set aside difficult and intractable policy goals and rivalries with other nations to make agreements on specific issues (like nuclear weapons policy, or Syria).

 It's also not an objection to say well even if Russia meddled in our elections and democratic processes, we did that too in other countries. This has rarely redounded to American interests to have done so. It was not a good thing that we did it, and most of the countries that were meddled in have had very mixed and poor results in their stability or even their allegiance to American hegemony (Iran most prominently figures against this idea being a good one, South Vietnam would be another good example, or most of Central America).

 Russia or Putin may have reasons to think this was a good idea. We do not have to.

 The point of the objections is largely in three areas:

 - That it was far from clear Trump was capable of addressing these substantive topics on his own, and in a way that would result in any deal, much less a deal favorable to US policy goals. He rarely credibly talks about anything in a way that suggests he has reached a well formed opinion or an informed position. This is fine if the deals and their details are to be worked out by others. He believes they are being worked out by himself alone.

 - That Trump is himself heavily compromised via the continued Russia/Mueller investigations, and that any agreements or attempts at agreements would be labored by this weight and unlikely to hold up. Indeed, it was extremely likely they would backfire with Congress (again) attempting to pass sanctions and other restrictions on Russia. These passed easily before, and aren't some liberal plot. Russia's actively doing stuff we don't and shouldn't like or tolerate.

 Trump seems at best purposefully oblivious to this, and more likely purposefully obstructionist over the whole issue. The better phrasing of objection here is less that he will appease Putin, but that he's a Manchurian Candidate. A Putin puppet. 

 - That Trump would obsequiously and favorably address yet another murderous dictator with a fawning admiration. Stylistically and diplomatically, this is wholly unnecessary. It is possible to conduct talks without telling horrible people they are awesome, and possible to tell relatively decent people that we share their major values even as we disagree about some particular issue. It all presents the position to other nations that our disagreements with our actual allies (EU, Canada, Mexico, South Korea, etc) are with rivalrous foes while our disagreements with our actual rivals (DPRK, Russia, China) are more cordial affairs. This makes little sense even from a game theory perspective. Theoretically it is about unpredictability. Unpredictability is potentially useful for a game of chicken type approach to foreign affairs. But this is repetitively predictable and unsurprising. Trump pisses off a bunch of American allies, and makes nice with some really terrible people. It is not unpredictable. It's boringly obvious. He has a long standing history of thinking some really awful and horrible regimes or the people running them were "tough" and "strong". This is not news. And it should surprise no one that he behaves more favorably toward such regimes now.