Joe Biden’s trip to the Middle East was a strangely uniting event. Whether you’re a progressive opposed to US coddling of brutal dictators or a conservative disgusted to watch a US president supplicate himself to a foreign ruler, Biden’s visit had something for everyone to dislike.

The trip as a whole was already a major reversal for the president. Charging that human rights should be “the core of our engagement with the world,” Biden had earlier vowed to “hold accountable” Saudi Arabia and cut off aid and arms sales to the country, in large part to draw a contrast on the campaign trail between himself and Donald Trump, one of the more subservient presidents to Saudi interests.

Yet here he was now, floating the restarting of “offensive” weapons sales, making excuses for his visit in a Washington Post op-ed, and giving a fist bump to the country’s despotic monarch, an image the Saudi government wasted no time in exploiting for PR purposes. That this comes after months of Saudi officials thumbing their noses at the president makes the optics all the worse.