With sharp statements that underscored a deep disconnect between the president and his party's orthodoxy in dealing with Russia, GOP lawmakers condemned Donald Trump's apparent appeasement of Vladimir Putin in Helsinki on Monday.

After President Trump undermined U.S. intelligence and Justice Department officials by calling the Russian president "extremely strong and powerful in his denial" of interference in the 2016 presidential election, a substantial number of his fellow Republicans distanced themselves from his assessment.

House Speaker Paul Ryan said, "There is no moral equivalence between the United States and Russia, which remains hostile to our most basic values and ideals." Sen. John McCain called the Trump-Putin press conference "one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory." Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker said Putin was likely celebrating with caviar. North Carolina Rep. Walter Jones said that "the ghost of Ronald Reagan must be in shock."

And even close allies of the president came to the defense of the American institutions he disparaged, reminding the public of Russian transgressions and wondering aloud why a president who eschews political politeness whiffed at the opportunity to talk tough on the world stage. Newt Gingrich, staunch defender of the president, said Trump needed to revise his statements about the intelligence community and Putin. "It is the most serious mistake of his presidency and must be corrected — immediately," Gingrich tweeted. And GOP Rep. Ron DeSantis, who is running with the president's support for governor of Florida, said on Fox News that Trump could have drawn a contrast to President Obama and thus had "the opportunity to say, 'There's a new sheriff in town.'"

But inherent in many of their statements of alarm over the president's behavior in Finland was an air of inevitability, which raises questions about whether there will be any real political consequences for Trump. Few GOP critics mentioned him by name, or outlined possible legislative steps going forward. GOP Senate Whip John Cornyn told reporters the president was "conflating" Russia interference with the legitimacy of his victory in 2016. And the scene was reminiscent of past Trump controversies in which party members denounced his actions only to move along as the news cycle turns over.

With confirmation hearings coming for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and with the approach of midterm elections in which many Republicans will depend on Trump voters for success, few candidates beyond those running in swing districts spoke out.

"I'd expect the political fallout will be limited, as opposed to becoming a more significant event," said GOP strategist Kevin Madden, who was a senior adviser to Mitt Romney during the 2012 campaign, during which the GOP nominee called Russia America’s greatest geopolitical foe. "Republicans are just not interested in testing or confronting their political base's support for the president right now. The president's most ardent supporters haven't cracked on the Russia issue to this point, so I don't see that changing because of a press conference."

While it's clear Republicans felt ashamed of the president's stance toward Putin, "I fear that too many members will not see any change in our polarized electorate to feel comfortable admonishing the president," said GOP strategist Rory Cooper, who served as an aide to former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. "If there were to ever be a turning point, I’d hope this is enough, but I doubt it." Indeed, earlier this month a delegation of Republican senators traveled to Russia for a rare set of meetings that were seen as representing a thawing of relations.

"Although I agree wholeheartedly with many Republicans publicly criticizing the President's behavior relating to Putin and Russia," tweeted Terry Sullivan, who ran Marco Rubio's presidential campaign, "[m]y question is, how long will it last? 24 hours? Maybe 48..."

Aboard Air Force One en route back to Washington, Trump attempted a bit of cleanup. "As I said today and many times before, ‘I have GREAT confidence in MY intelligence people,’" he tweeted. "However, I also recognize that in order to build a brighter future, we cannot exclusively focus on the past – as the world’s two largest nuclear powers, we must get along!"

The tweet came after Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats defended his assessment and that of his colleagues against the president's equivocation on Russian culpability in the election. "We have been clear in our assessments of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and their ongoing, pervasive efforts to undermine our democracy, and we will continue to provide unvarnished and objective intelligence," Coats said in a statement.

A former U.S. senator from Indiana, Coats has been warning of large scale cyberattacks and has said Russia is among the worst offenders. "It was in the months prior to September 2001 when, according to then-CIA Director George Tenet, the system is blinking red. And here we are nearly two decades later, and I'm here to say, the warning lights are blinking red again," Coats said last week.

In an interview with CBS News on Saturday, Trump said he didn’t know “if I agree with that" appraisal from his own DNI. And on Monday, standing next to Putin, the president downplayed evidence presented by U.S. intelligence agencies and GOP-led congressional investigations that Russia indeed meddled in the election, just days after the Department of Justice issued indictments of a dozen Russian officials in that regard.

"My people came to me -- Dan Coats, came to me and some others -- they said they think it's Russia. I have President Putin. He just said it's not Russia," Trump said when asked whom he believes. "I will say this: I don't see any reason why it would be. ... I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today.”

Trump shifted gears to criticize the FBI's handling of the email probe involving his presidential opponent. "Where are those servers?" he said. "What happened to Hillary Clinton's emails? 33,000 emails gone, just gone. I think in Russia they wouldn't be gone so easily."

The performance was too much for even those Republican lawmakers who supported Trump's move to soften tensions with Russia. "I want President Trump’s diplomatic efforts to be successful, but I’ll take the word of a Hoosier over Vladimir Putin any day," said Indiana Rep. Jim Banks. "We must take seriously the warnings of Director Coats and the American intelligence community. Russia is not our friend."

Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford said that while presidents should meet with foreign leaders, he trusts the U.S. intelligence community "more than I trust a former KGB agent, Vladimir Putin."

House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy, who led a daylong congressional questioning last week of FBI official Peter Strzok, reminded the president that "Russia attempted to undermine the fundamentals of our democracy, impugn the reliability of the 2016 election, and sow the seeds of discord among Americans."

And as Trump called Putin a "good competitor" and blamed his own political opponents for past Russian transgressions, Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton -- the president's close confidant and defender -- called Putin a "committed adversary" of the United States and sought to remind the public that Russia is solely responsible for sour relations with the U.S.

"In the last few years alone, Russia meddled in our presidential campaign, violated arms-control treaties with the United States, invaded Ukraine, assassinated political opponents in the United Kingdom, made common cause with Iran in propping up Bashar al-Assad’s outlaw regime in Syria, and cheated not only in the Olympics, but even in the Paralympics," Cotton said in a statement that did not mention Trump or the White House. "Strength is the one language for which Vladimir Putin needs no interpreter.”