Rachel Maddow

Nicole Wallace, what did you take from this hearing today?

Which is the dark and terrible side of the Justice Department professional ethic that says if you are asked to do something unprofessional or wrong, you resign.

We have seen people resigning like whole forests of them falling all at once.

And what it means is that the Justice Department, as you say, doesn't have those folks anymore.

That's right.

We're in Lauren's defense, Townie Hall.

There was some like pothole filling.

No, they actually did do it.

Totally.

Yeah, I mean, the aesthetic of it, his asceticism, his stoicism, is itself part of the message.

Yes.

And more of the case is going to come out if volume two of his report is unsealed by the court.

And a lot of people argue that part of the reason this whole hearing might have happened today was to try to muddy him up before the country gets a whole new dose of information based on the evidence that he gathered.

Yeah, I couldn't help but think that, you know.

Back in the day, if you were a kid who played hooky from school to watch a congressional hearing, you could pretty much assume that that kid someday was going to become a congressional staffer or run for Congress.

It was that kind of nerddom.

Any kid watching this today is definitely never going to run for Congress.

This is like whatever the opposite of an advertisement is for whether this is a good line of work.

All right, we got much more to get to tonight during our special coverage, our special recap of special counsel Jack Smith's public testimony, including our exclusive interview with the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, Congressman Jamie Raskin.

Stay right with us.