yeah. i also don t know what they were hoping to get accomplished in that area. i think people on the left already know how they feel about corey lewandowski. i can t imagine there was anything more they could have accomplished that would have made that worse in a way that was really effective what it did do is provide an opportunity for corey to remind people that he is hoping to remain in politics supporters of trump who may be in new hampshire, to let them know that he will bow be a smaller version of that and it just boosts his profile and pleases the president. is this an in-kind contribution he was able to say, i ve already talked to you behind closed doors x number of times, i spent x number of hours with robert mueller. compared to others, he s been cooperative. and all of that feeds into the president s narrative that they re just trying to find something. they didn t find something through all of this time and now they keep digging for it and so it almost flipped on
leaned on corey lewandowski to convey a message to the former a.g. that he wanted him to curtail the russia investigation and talk about it in less than flattering ways. i will say this about everything that we ve seen transpire today and i should mention this hearing has about 90 minutes yet to go. we have not yet seen this new framework that this committee voted into fruition last week. we ve not yet seen that where we ll have a half hour from the committee staffers from the democratic side and half hour from the committee staffers on the republican side putting specific questions to corey lewandowski so that might put some points on the board for democrats. but i talked to a staffer and said you agreed to this new approach why not have the committee staffers do the questioning first? his response was, well, you re assuming that this whole thing was about getting answers from corey lewandowski. i then replied, well, what was the point? the point this staffer says was to show, was to
they seemed incredibly disorganized in terms of the questioning as well. it s like they were shocked that corey was going to play a political game right back at them it doesn t matter which makes no sense. the guy is a professional political operative. he s not going to go in there laying down, stephanie. you know, maybe there is some strategy that we re not aware of, laying the groundwork for obstruction which could protect them in a legal battle, who knows. but corey said something today that i think is going to register with a lot of people. he said you d be better off i think the american people wanting you to spend time on the priorities that they care about rather than this political theater. and i m ad libbing his words. i guess he really is running for, isn t he. the majority of the american people are focused on what s before them in their lives and, you know, whether or not corey lewandowski was asked by
the investigation was populated by many trump haters i m trying to adhere to the white house s request i answer questions that are provided in the mueller report only. i don t know the answer to that. i ll be happy to answer your conversation or you can have a conversation with yourself i don t believe there was a question again, i can t discuss any private conversation i may have had with the president i m respecting the executive branch privilege of confidentiality. one person we know was tuning into today s hearing was president trump who tweeted early on, such a beautiful opening statement by corey lewandowski. thank you, corey let me bring in geoff bennett covering this from capitol hill. carol, eugene, stephanie and brad are back. geoff, it s still going on if you had to tell somebody who did not watch this hearing what was it about and what was accomplished, what would you say? reporter: you know, chuck, it depends on what matters more
does the sideshow matter more or the substance of what democrats think they gleaned, what they extracted from corey lewandowski matter more? for the sideshow, democrats could make the argument should have been better prepared for the blizzard of obstructions that corey lewandowski tried to throw in their way in part because he tweeted well before he even stepped foot into this hearing room, basically the same talking points we ve heard from president trump, about how the mueller report showed no obstruction, no collusion. that s not entirely true but there was no denying that corey lewandowski would enter this hearing room with an agenda as one of donald trump s loyal foot soldiers. on the substance of the thing, though, you hear democrats make a couple of points one, they say that, yes, under questioning mainly from hank johnson, from steve cohen, from some of the members who went well after the chairman of this committee that corey lewandowski did admit that robert mueller and his te