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President Trump may have pressed Russian President Vladimir Putin on interference in the U.S. presidential campaign during their Friday meeting, but to Democrats it was too little, too late.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said it was a "dereliction of duty" for the Trump administration to give "equal credence" to U.S. intelligence agencies blaming Moscow for the election year hacking and Russian denials of the same.

"President Trump had an obligation to bring up Russia's interference in our election with Putin, but he has an equal obligation to take the word of our intelligence community rather than that of the Russian president," Schumer said in a statement. "For Secretary [of State Rex] Tillerson to say that this issue will remain unresolved is disgraceful."

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, argued in a statement Friday that Trump had already undermined anything he might have said to Putin by appearing uncertain of Russian meddling the previous day.

"Whatever the president actually told Putin, it would have had much more force if just the day before President Trump had not equivocated about who was behind the unprecedented attack targeting America last fall," Warner said. "It would also have had more force if he had not again criticized the integrity of our intelligence agencies, among whom there is unwavering agreement about Russia's active interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election."

Former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, an Obama appointee, made a similar argument on Twitter, saying Trump's "inexplicable refusal to confirm Russian election interference insults career intel pros" and will make it more difficult to prevent similar incidents in the future.

Tillerson came out of the first face-to-face meeting between the U.S. and Russian presidents saying Trump opened by bringing up the election interference and "repeatedly" questioned Putin on the subject.

There are other pressing international issues in need of a resolution, such as Syria and North Korea, which Tillerson implied was why they eventually moved on from talking about the 2016 presidential election. A southwestern Syrian ceasefire was announced after the meeting.

But Trump and Putin met in a political context where rank-and-file Democrats believe the Republican benefited from this hacking and may have even won because of it. An NPR/PBS/Marist poll found 80 percent of Democrats and 58 percent of independents believe Trump did something unethical or illegal with Russia.

Late last year, an Economist/YouGov poll determined that more than half of Democrats believed the Russians changed votes from Hillary Clinton to Trump, a proposition for which there is no evidence. That result came before a number of other incidents heightened Russia scrutiny, such as the firing of FBI Director James Comey and the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller.

It is unclear how much political hay Democrats can raise on Russia outside their base. The party lost a series of competitive special congressional elections, which led some Democratic lawmakers to call for the party to focus more on the economy and less on Russia.

Nevertheless, multiple investigations into Russia's actions and whether there was any collusion with the Trump campaign continue. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, published an op-ed arguing that putting America first meant confronting Putin, using Trump's campaign slogan against him.

There was little likelihood that Democrats would be pleased with the outcome of the Trump-Putin meeting. But they and some Republican Russia hawks were incensed by talk of a joint U.S.-Russian cybersecurity task force and called on Trump to sign tougher Russian sanctions into law.

"The establishment of a working group as reported by Foreign Minister Lavrov to study how to curb cyber interference in elections in which the Russians would play any role, would be akin to inviting the North Koreans to participate in a commission on nonproliferation it tacitly adopts the fiction that the Russians are a constructive partner on the subject instead of the worst actor on the world stage," Schiff said in a statement.

Trump is the third straight U.S. president to try to find a negotiating partner in Putin.

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Democrats find Trump's Russia rebuke too little, too late - Washington Examiner