you agree with that mimi? sad is the word. i don t fault robert mueller for being robert mueller. that is who he is, to quote matt on twitter the other day, trump is lucky jim comey wasn t the special counsel. it would have been a very, very different experience. robert mueller was and is who he is. but any success for the democrats that i think that came out today was because adam schiff and nadler guided us there. mueller didn t want to and i understand as a prosecutor but it makes me sad. i think we need it as a country. mueller s focus on russia s involvement shouldn t be a surprise. even in his nine-minute statement, that was his focus. he was passionate about that and that s where he was today too. in terms of what happens next, yes, a lot of our hot takes are wrong but you know who else is wrong, our lawmakers. oh, i didn t read the book but
and i certainly didn t expect we would hear that from robert mueller from the halting beginning. i also credit nadler and schiff having covered most of the ground that needed to be covered, each of them, in the first five minutes of questioning in both sessions. both of them did a very good job getting mueller on the record on the most important stuff. but then mueller absolutely advanced the story into some territory we did not know existed before today. i completely concur about both chairmen. chairman nadler used the first five minutes to do all of the business that needed to be done in the hearing, frankly and chairman schiff did the same thing. i want to ask you about russia. people who have covered mueller commented this hou commented this hour and it was apparent watching it in realtime, the question of attacking our democracy that is where mueller was most animated, most alarmed and most urgent. and that s the only place i saw a crack in the human shield of republicans agains
if i had made a false statement to an investigator on your team, could i go to jail up to five years? yes. yes. but it s congress, so the rare moment of levity today. joining our conversation from the washington post, national political reporter robert costa. robert costa, your take on the day? just a few minutes speaker pelosi will hold a news conference at the capitol with chairman schiff and nadler. decisions have to be made by democrats how to proceed. i spent all day at the capitol talking to lawmakers on both sides. senator tester from montana, moderate democrat, he s just not sure at this point if it makes political sense for democrats to move forward because republicans control the senate. he said it would be a futile endeavor. at the same time so much pressure because of what mr.
this morning, he was a little halting. that was from the first session. so they went after him a couple of times he could be charged as president and the answer from mueller was yes. yes, he was consistent and firm on that. that s what the democrats will look at. there s questioning from schiff and nadler in particular that produced moments we will see on cable time and time again. having said that the trumps and white house are downright dpleeful how it went. we ve seen the president s twitter account but it s not just him, the son don jr., jay secular, rudy giuliani are not just suggesting mueller didn t land any points today but criticized mueller s performance himself, noting he was halting. at times he seemed detached and unsure of what was in the report. we will see it again in a few minutes when the president leaves the white house and aides tell reporters there he will be speaking about had. i think you will see him again to attack mueller s credibility
today said what needed to be said, which is we are facing an ongoing active threat. he actually moved forward to 2020 and said they re going to do it again. he also said and i made note of this it s not just russia that has this capacity, that, quote, other countries have gained the capacity to do the same thing, unquote. so this is a live threat. it s not just about russia. it s not just about republican versus democrat. it s a barn issue that needs to be addressed and repeatedly mueller said do it now, do it fast, do it soon. want to say something? i want to go back to one thing frank said a second ago about mueller s refusal to answer questions, just because it was an issue neil, cattial and i have been raising 12 hours before this hearing started and i believe it was unasked by the judiciary committee and i agree, chairman nadler did a solid job. i think the rest of the committee has a lot to answer for. they did not perform as good as they could have and should have, which