Donald J. Trump shook hands with Vladimir Putin today and then got right to the heart of the matter.

Did you meddle in our 2016 presidential election? Did your government try to influence the outcome to ensure that I would get elected? So it was that the president possibly asked his Russian colleague.

Putin’s response? I deny any involvement. My government did not meddle in your election.

OK, then. That settles it, yes? Hardly.

Obviously, I wasn’t in the room. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was there, though, and he said that Trump “pressed” Putin on the election meddling matter. I guess we might need to ask the secretary of state what “press” means to him, if not to the president.

What we don’t know yet is whether the president stood up for the intelligence agencies that have concluded that Russia did interfere with our 2016 electoral process. Nor we do know what the president might have said to Putin about what the United States would do in response, given what he intelligence experts have said to this point.

This kind of summit diplomacy is brand new to Donald Trump. Putin’s got a lengthy record of face-to-face meetings/confrontations with U.S. presidents as well as with other world leaders. Time will tell us soon whether Putin pushed Trump around in that meeting room.

That all said, I am heartened that the world leaders struck a cease fire deal in part of Syria. Time will tell us — probably very soon — whether the cease fire will stick. A previous one lasted only hours before falling apart.

Are we to believe Putin — the former KGB spy chief — when he denies Russian government efforts to meddle in our election?

Umm. I don’t think so.