Robert Mueller's testimony before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday was compelling and direct. He confirmed that Donald Trump ordered staff to falsify records, that his report did not exonerate Trump of his crimes, and that impeachment was one of the remedies that he suggested in place of a formal indictment. Oh, and a Republican elicited the information that Trump could be indicted for obstruction after he leaves office, too.

All four of those, alone or together, are major headlines which should dominate the news cycle such as it is for at least, say, an hour.

But as I write, Robert Mueller has completed his Judiciary Committee testimony and is 15 minutes away from testifying before the Senate Intel Committee, but the Beltway media has their marching orders.

Chuck Todd, in the video above, tells all NBC News viewers, "On substance the Democrats got exactly what they wanted...But on optics, it was a complete failure."

According to his compatriot Savannah Guthrie, Democrats were looking for some grand narrative and gotcha moment that they did not get. I would refer Guthrie AND Chuck Todd to my first paragraph and encourage them to click the links therein.

Here's some hot takes by our "reporters" who are ostensibly paid not to write a script but to report things. You can see that they're just too, too cynical and lazy to be bothered with that.

The Washington Post's The Fix:

New York Times reporters:

Glenn Thrush deleted his:

Nate Silver:

So the script must go like this: Because Mueller confirmed things which these reporters know to be true but have worked overtime NOT to report because reporting it would kill their access to Trump, they've instead chosen to adopt the "cool kids bored script" in order to pander to the guy who trades access for positive coverage.

The future of our country literally hangs on what is happening right now. But these reporters cannot be bothered to actually stick to facts. It's pathetic.

UPDATE: Columbia Journalism Review's public editor took Chuck Todd to task. Her scolding applies to every damn one of the reporters mentioned in this post.

For Chuck Todd all the political world’s a stage, and he’s the star.

And it’s not just Todd. Other MSNBC anchors reacted to the Mueller hearings similarly, finding fault with the Democrats’, and Mueller’s, lack of pizazz as performers. Brian Williams referred to “the caffeine gap” in the Judiciary Committee’s questioning. I can’t help pointing out that excessive concern with caffeinated pizzazz can warp a journalist’s judgement pretty severely, and is best avoided.