I wasn’t fully convinced before that Putin has Trump in his pocket, but after that stunt, I am convinced that he is under Putin’s thumb. Trump and co. could have had marching orders from Putin to do exactly that. Also, this is something that Putin have done and would do, publicly humiliating someone on live TV.
Your question already imply an answer: they wanted it to be on TV
To me the situation looks quite clear: people are calling up for more war and military spending, that’s what governments ever wanted. People are getting fooled with a gimmick as simple as a scapegoat.
Can you elaborate what you mean?
You may believe that our rulers, the one who sit in the government, are good people there to serve justice and help others but a normal person that has no authoritarian ambitions and who believe in fairness would never end up in such position, especially when the system is as much corrupted as it can be and plagued with bad actors. Governments are not your fiends, rulers seek power, they seek wealth and war and stacking weapons is a leverage to those things. So called first world countries are built on exploiting the shit out of third world countries. Governments and rulers benefit from wars and exploitation, it grands them even more power and wealth, they want more war not less, they have always been seeking war and rulers have always clashed with each others.