Donald Trump needed a big headline to wrest public attention away from his former lawyer Michael Cohen's explosive testimony.

'Summit Fails' just wasn't the one he was looking for.

The talks ended abruptly, earlier than planned, with no agreement or roadmap for what comes next.

Mr Trump shrugged it off, saying Kim Jong-un asked for a complete removal of economic sanctions, and that was just not something he could agree to.

"Sometimes you have to walk," he said.

It's a line that came straight from his book The Art of the Deal (or in this case, no deal).

The lack of an agreement could sour further diplomatic efforts. And, in the end, it won't be lasting enough to distract from the domestic issues Mr Trump will face in coming weeks.

Political reaction has been mixed

"He was the big winner, Kim Jong-un, in getting to sit face-to-face with the most powerful person in the world, the president of the United States," said Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

"And really it's good that the President did not give him anything for the little that [Mr Kim] was proposing."

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the President "should be commended for his personal commitment to persuading Kim Jong-un to pursue a different path."

Loading

However, experts say that if a world leader makes the effort to attend a summit halfway around the world, you'd think they'd have sense for what the outcome will be.

"I'm a little puzzled about why that wasn't sorted out," said Christopher Hill, former US ambassador to Korea who headed up the six-party talks to tackle the same problem in the mid 2000s.

Specifically he wonders why North Korea's push for sanctions to be lifted came as a surprise.

"That was clearly what the North Koreans were expecting. Did the Trump administration signal they were going to give some kind of sanctions relief?"

In the days before the President left for Hanoi, several possibilities were on the table — an official peace declaration to end the Korean war, liaison offices, a nuclear verification plan.

"I hate to be critical of the people doing the preparation, but you have to think they have no idea what they want, because the President has no idea what he wants except a kind of political victory," Mr Hill said.

North Korea offers an opposing summit narrative

Was Mr Kim serious about denuclearising?

"If I'm not willing to do that, I wouldn't be here right now," he said, smiling, to reporters at the beginning of the summit.

His Foreign Minister, in a rare press conference in the aftermath, contradicted POTUS, saying that North Korea had only asked for partial sanctions removal, but Mr Trump had pushed too hard for additional nuclear dismantling.

Loading

Loading

There's a logic to North Korea's weapons building, says Mike Chinoy, the author of Meltdown: The Inside Story of the North Korean Nuclear Crisis and a 17-time visitor to North Korea.

"They look around the world at the countries that the US is menacing — Iran, Venezuela — and see they don't have a bomb. The logic is that if you have a bomb, you get summits and Donald Trump saying he loves you."

Cohen's claims dominate the news cycle

The summit flop capped a difficult week for the President who returns home to the fallout from his former fixer Michael Cohen's testimony before the House Oversight Committee.

He gave evidence that Mr Trump repaid him for hush money payments, which constitutes a significant campaign finance violation. He said Mr Trump had direct knowledge that WikiLeaks had a trove of hacked emails to use against the Democrats in 2016. He alleged tax avoidance.

Loading

He called the President a racist, a conman and a cheat.

The Republican representatives pointed to the fact that Cohen is heading to jail for three years for lying to Congress among others.

Loading

It was a show that had all of Washington glued to the television, captivated by the political circus. It upstaged the early events of the Hanoi summit as the major news networks analysed the affair for more than 24 hours.

Loading

But during the post-summit press conference in Hanoi, reporters managed to get only one Cohen question to the President.

"Well he lied a lot," Mr Trump said. "But he didn't lie about one thing. He said, 'no collusion with the Russian hoax.' And I said I wonder why he didn't just lie about that with the rest."

His answer not only spun the damaging hearing into a win, pointing to his innocence as far as links with Russia go, but it also followed the Republican strategy to call Cohen a liar at every turn.

Cohen's testimony is just the tip of the iceberg

House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings said congress will seek hearings with the individuals Cohen mentioned during his testimony.

Those include Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg, not to mention Mr Trump's own children, Ivanka and Don Jr.

Loading

Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff also announced a public hearing with Felix Sater, who worked closely with Cohen on the Moscow Trump Tower project.

So that's what Donald Trump will be stewing on this weekend: how to get North Korea back to the table, and the fact that Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on alleged Russian collusion could bring more bad news any minute.