In Washington’s hyper-partisan environment, both major political parties need scandals the way pyromaniacs require fire. In the Donald Trump era, at least, the media is playing the role of gleeful arsonist. All week, CNN ran a clock counting down the hours, minutes and seconds before James Comey’s Senate Intelligence Committee appearance; all cable news networks provided wall-to-wall coverage of the hearing, and newspapers covered it with online banner headlines posted in real time.

In the end, neither Comey’s testimony nor President Trump’s Friday afternoon performance-art news conference in the Rose Garden advanced anyone’s understanding about whether Russia exerted influence on the Trump presidential campaign — the rationale for all this attention. That doesn’t mean the hearings were a waste of time. For a discerning observer — one not blinded by partisanship — a number of lessons can be gleaned. Here are 10:

1. James Comey really liked being FBI director — and hated being fired. He also detested how it was done, why it was done and what Trump said about him afterward. It was during his planned remarks before taking questions that Comey called Trump a liar, never hiding his resentment. For the rest of the session, he was measured and temperate. He didn’t joust with the Republican senators skeptical of his motives, and refused to be baited by Democrats into saying that Trump had committed a crime. That said, Comey didn’t shy away from implying that the president tried to stifle an open criminal investigation into former National Security Council adviser Michael Flynn’s contact with Russian officials.

2. Yes, he called the president a liar, but not about Russia. It’s instructive to recall exactly what Comey said Trump lied about. In Democrats’ telling, Trump fired the FBI director because he refused to go easy on Flynn. To liberals, this suggests a larger cover-up. Comey didn’t go there. He quoted Trump only as expressing “hope” that Comey would go easy on Flynn. Comey didn’t quibble with the Republicans’ point that the president must have known that firing the FBI director would have the opposite effect. Ultimately, Comey indicated he wasn’t sure why Trump fired him, but what frosted him was Trump’s claim that Comey was unpopular within the bureau. This is what he termed “a lie.”

Not a man to turn the other cheek, Trump took issue Friday with Comey’s comments. He called him “a leaker,” said parts of his testimony “just weren’t true,” and added that Comey’s performance confirmed what he’d said previously about him — characterizations that included the phrase “nut job.”

3. Comey has a high opinion of his own rectitude. In a private 2004 standoff with George W. Bush over a domestic anti-terrorism surveillance program, Comey told the president, “Here I stand, I can do no other.” He was quoting Martin Luther, who said those words while breaking with the Church of Rome. On Thursday, when asked whether he thought Trump was discreetly telling him to drop the Flynn investigation, Comey invoked another grandiose historical reference. “Yes,” he replied. “It rings in my ears as kind of ‘Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?’” This was a reference to a line from Henry II during his battle of wills with Thomas á Becket, archbishop of Canterbury. The king’s plea was an invitation to murder Becket, which four English knights dutifully carried out on Dec. 29, 1170.

4. Comey used his own palace intrigue to get a special prosecutor. Comey revealed that he orchestrated news leaks of his memos detailing each conversation he had with the president. Comey wrote them under the belief that Trump might mischaracterize their interactions. Comey revealed that he’d leaked them via a Columbia University law school professor — with a specific goal in mind: “I asked him to, because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel.”

5. Senators didn’t do their homework. Amid their fawning over Comey and special prosecutor Robert Mueller, no senator cared to ask Comey if he’d pulled strings to get Mueller, an old ally, appointed. No one pointed out that with his Thursday testimony, Comey had now directly or indirectly questioned the integrity of three of the previous five U.S. attorneys general. None asked why Comey and Mueller had botched the FBI’s investigation into the anthrax killer, an extensive probe resulting in the payment of millions of taxpayers’ dollars to an innocent man whom the bureau falsely fingered for the crimes.

6. Anonymous sources aren’t always reliable. Under prodding from two Republicans, Comey characterized an influential New York Times story on the Trump-Russia saga as being mostly wrong. The Feb. 14 blockbuster was headlined “Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence.” When Idaho Sen. James Risch asked the witness whether the story was factual, Comey replied, “In the main, it was not true.”

Later, Sen. Tom Cotton returned to the question of the Times’ accuracy.

“Would it be fair to characterize that story as almost entirely wrong?” Cotton asked. “Yes,” Comey replied.

Meanwhile, CNN was forced to admit that one of its scoops was also erroneous. The network had reported that Comey would dispute Trump’s assertions that he’d been assured he was not a target of the FBI’s investigation. But CNN’s sources were wrong: Comey testified that he had made those assurances.

7. “Captain Craven.” The Jim Comey that emerged Thursday did not jibe with his reputation as a brave bureaucrat who stood up for the Constitution in the Bush years. He parroted back to Trump the president’s assertion that Flynn was “a good guy,” didn’t pressure Attorney General Jeff Sessions to stay in the room when Trump wanted to talk to him alone, and acceded to Obama administration Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s insistence he call the FBI criminal probe into Hillary Clinton’s missing emails “a matter” instead of an investigation. “I don’t want to make it sound like I’m Captain Courageous,” Comey responded when pressed by Sen. Marco Rubio. No risk there.

8. “From Russia With Love”: One disquieting impression that came out of the hearings, which Republican senators didn’t bother to counteract, is that President Trump was far more interested in the FBI’s probe of him than how to deal with the threat posed by Russian hacking into the most sensitive and vital machinery of American democracy.

9. Trump’s enemies don’t yet have the goods: Although some Democrats and liberal commentators heard enough to assert that the president had either skirted the law or gone beyond it, Comey’s testimony did not seem sufficient to charge Trump with a crime or start proceedings to remove him from office. For this “matter,” to use Loretta Lynch’s word, to go further will require an underlying wrongdoing. This scandal has gone about as far as it can on concerns about the process. It’s time for Trump’s critics to find a real crime — and one committed by Americans, not Russians — or reconcile themselves to his presidency.

10. It is possible for Trump to stay off Twitter. As the media hyped Comey’s impending testimony, enterprising saloon owners in Washington, D.C., New York City and other places announced that they’d show the Senate hearings on TV, like a football game, and serve free drinks when Trump tweeted. At the end of Comey’s testimony, with @RealDonaldTrump’s account still tweet-less, the patrons had to pay their full fare. Moral of the story? Barkeeps are savvier than political writers.

Carl M. Cannon is executive editor and Washington Bureau chief of RealClearPolitics.