Yesterday should have been a brutal, campaign ending day for Hillary Clinton. The guy who is basically shielding her from criminal prosecution stood in front of Congress and for hours slammed her judgment, her “callousness” toward national security, and even her “sophistication.”

Republicans successfully painted the picture of a man who refused to bring charges because he was basically ordered not to, but who clearly believed that Hillary Clinton had no business handling classified information ever again. Which, of course, would make it difficult to be President. The Democrats, by way of contrast, were left a blubbering mess, without scoring a single media point, and making themselves look like idiots for pretending that the idea of holding a hearing about the damning allegations raised by Comey was somehow nonserious.

The day started, of course, with Trump meeting with House Republicans in an attempt to slow or at least halt a threatened public mutiny about Trump’s behavior, including his bizarre rant about the Star of David tweet during a speech last night. Although Trump faced some tough questions, for the most part House members appeared ready to listen and left the meeting and for the most part did their best to turn the national focus back to Hillary’s carelessness with national security.

As he has always done, however, Trump decided to respond to any news cycle that’s bad for Hillary by publicly drawing attention back to some stupid thing or another that he’s done. And yet again, Trump didn’t disappoint.

First, he picked a public fight with Jeff Flake and Mark Kirk, calling Kirk a “loser” and telling Jeff Flake he was probably going to lose an election (that he isn’t even facing this year).

Then he asked whether he would respect the constitutional powers of Congress and he responded with an answer that clearly indicated that he doesn’t know the Constitution from his own rectal canal.

This is now the fourth or fifth time that elected Republicans as a whole have attempted to come to grips with Trump and talk themselves into the idea that he can maintain message discipline and at least not bring them down with him. They have begged and pleaded with him. They have basically deluded themselves into believing that now, Trump is going to turn the corner. Now, he’s going to become Presidential. Now, at the very least, he’s not going to be an offensive, clueless buffoon.

And they tried to do their best to save his flailing candidacy today. And in return, he went out and shot them in the face. Maybe they should just stop trying.