committee so they don't find themselves in jail or facing criminal charges, but also not betraying trump here. >> do you think that the committee's hardball here backed by the attorney general is working? >> absolutely. did we expect meadows to fold two weeks ago, maybe three weeks ago? absolutely not. he was putting up the same hard front that we saw from bannon and others. so this is a crack. it's the first major crack here in seeing how trump allies can navigate this committee, because nobody wants to spend years fighting court battles, nobody wants to have criminal charges leveled at them, and nobody seems to be willing to put their lives on the line as martyrs as we've seen from bannon all for the sake of trump. they know he would never do the same thing for them, so they're constantly negotiating what they should do in order to toe that line, ari, because this comes down to making sure we don't cross trump but also don't end up in jail. >> i think you make such an important point.