Judy Woodruff:

From the attorney general's testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary, his refusal to appear before the House committee, and a growing 2020 field, it's been another busy week in Washington.

Here to assess it all are Shields and Brooks. That is syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks, who's joining us tonight from San Francisco.

Hello to both of you, David and Mark.

Let's start by talking about that phone call that we learned about this afternoon, Mark, the president on the phone, over an hour, with Russia's President Vladimir Putin. We are told the president himself said they talked about Russian interference or alleged interference in the 2016 election, but completely dismissed it.

He said the two of them agreed that the Mueller report was a waste of time, in so many words, and that the whole Russian — belief that the Russians did anything wrong was a hoax.