It was meant to be the moment when Democrats started to knit a narrative of presidential malfeasance that many of them hope will trigger impeachment.
But it turned into an iconic Trump-era spectacle that served instead to show how the White House and its acolytes have made a mockery of the checks and balances of the Washington system
A farcical House Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday featuring Corey Lewandowski, President Donald Trump's ex-campaign manager, emphasized how Democrats are struggling to hold Trump to account.
Party leaders were left to explain why they had not been more nimble in questioning a witness loaded for bear, since everyone knew Lewandowski would show up with the intention of causing havoc.
After hours of frustrating cross-examination that one of their number, Rep. Hank Johnson of Georgia, compared to "a fish being cleaned with a spoon," Democrats were left with a conundrum: how to use televised hearings to tease out damning passages of the Mueller report when Trump and his gang are determined to turn them into a circus.
Their broader strategy of using their House majority to slowly build a pattern of presidential abuse of power and obstruction of justice has yet to reach a critical mass. On the evidence of Tuesday, it may never do so.
It was a great day for the White House, however.
Its strategy of curtailing Lewandowski's testimony by foreshadowing controversial executive privilege claims appeared to be an attempt to goad Democrats into another protracted court battle that could delay a day of reckoning.
By sunset, Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-New York, warned that Lewandowski risked being held in contempt, for helping a White House "desperate for the American people not to hear the truth."
Trump's army of Republican committee members, meanwhile, more eager to catch his eye as he watched on Air Force One than to honor their lawmakers' duty to constrain the executive, played along with Lewandowski, relishing the chance to grandstand.
"You had a pretty good candidate," said Rep. Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican who's one of Trump's closest allies in Congress.
"The best," the ex-campaign manager replied.