place against the backdrop of reports that the mueller report is expected soon. with us to talk about all of it, a veteran print journalist, now executive editor of the news start-up calls news guard, and also a political veteran journalist, he's a veteran political journalist, he's not terribly political as a person or employee, he happens to be our national political reporter. welcome to you both. john, rate the stakes as we head into next week. we say this about every passing week, how consequential they all are. this is one of the few cases where just a glance at the calendar does set ourselves, our stars up pretty nicely. >> the calendar is like an escalating tournament in vegas, brian, where every week more and more chips get pushed in.