the side of folks who are favorable to the mueller investigation, that barr was saying just enough of the right things to get through the vote and that he may have some other intention here, and he is carefully parsing his language in some of these questions today. i think one would be wise to be cautious about this given the how close we are to some very critical inflection points in the mueller investigation and how nervous the president is about anything, you know, that gets closer to him than it already is. >> rick, barr described turning down an earlier request to join trump's legal defense team. here's what he said. >> i said at my point in life, i really didn't want to take on this burden and that i actually preferred the freedom to not have any representation of an individual but just say what i thought about anything without having to worry about that. and i said that i -- my wife and i were sort of looking forward to a bit of respite, and i didn't want to stick my head into that meat grinder. >> rick, you know what you say. everything trump touches dies.