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There were details of the hush-money payments he made for Trump to adult film star Stormy Daniels. There was his bullying of Trump clients (Cohen estimated he personally threatened people, on Trump’s behalf, more than 500 times). There were his calls to contractors to explain, to Trump’s glee, that his boss was reneging on the payments he owed them. There was Cohen’s management of Trump’s Moscow hotel deal, and the effort to cover it up. Plus, there were Trump’s schemes to reduce his taxes, inflate his reported wealth, and abuse his charitable trust, not to mention his personal treachery, tackiness, and overt racism.

If you didn’t know it already, Cohen’s testimony confirmed it: We’re living in a country controlled by a narcissistic sociopath whose only interest in his office is to use it for personal gain.

Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, noted that Cohen’s most trenchant observation was how Trump saw his whole campaign for the White House as a “once-in-a-lifetime money-making opportunity” and “the greatest infomercial in the history of the world”—and was totally unprepared for what to do after he actually won.

Cohen offered a few new details on Trump’s schemes to inflate his wealth, avoid taxes, run dubious enterprises through his charitable trust, and encourage his aides to lie without being too explicit.

But the Republicans on the committee were having none of it. They feigned outrage that Congress would take up such minor matters as bribery, blackmail, and self-dealing by a President who was, after all, at that very moment overseas trying to strike a historic peace deal with North Korea (after tweeting that Cohen is a “rat”).

Republicans feigned outrage that Congress would take up such minor matters as bribery, blackmail, and self-dealing by a President.

The GOP committee members focused on smearing Cohen for lying to Congress, and for crimes, including campaign finance violations (a.k.a. the Stormy Daniels payoffs), that were directly connected to Cohen’s work for Trump. Somehow they managed to spend the entire hearing heaping outrage on Cohen for those acts without following the logical chain that connected Cohen’s misdeeds directly to the President.

They put up a ridiculous poster of Cohen with the words “Liar Liar Pants on Fire!” They questioned Cohen’s claims that he made those payments to Stormy Daniels at Trump’s request.

“Our colleagues aren’t upset because you lied to Congress for the President,” Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, told Cohen. “They’re upset because you stopped lying to Congress for the President.”

Cohen, Trump’s former attack dog, seemed unfazed by the Republicans’ relentless attempts to discredit him.

“I’m responsible for your silliness, because I did the same thing that you’re doing now, for ten years,” he said. “I protected Mr. Trump. . . . and I can only warn you, the more people that follow Mr. Trump, as I did blindly, are going to suffer the same consequences that I’m suffering.”

The warning didn’t seem to make the Republicans on the committee any smarter.

The most revealing moment in the hearing came when Representative Mark Meadows, Republican of North Carolina, dragged out Lynne Patton, an African American event planner who works for Trump, in order to disprove Cohen’s claim that Trump is a racist. “She says that as a daughter of a man born in Birmingham, Alabama, that there is no way that she would work for an individual who was a racist,” Meadows declared, as Patton stood silently behind him, then sat down.

Never mind that Trump’s public remarks, as much as Cohen’s confirming anecdotes, demonstrate his racism beyond a shadow of a doubt.

As Representative Ayanna Pressley, Democrat of Massachusetts, aptly summed it up: “Would you agree that someone could deny rental units to African Americans, lead the birther movement, refer to to the diaspora as ‘shithole countries,’ and refer to white supremacists as ‘fine people,’ have a black friend, and still be racist?”

Later in the hearing, Representative Rashida Tlaib, Democrat of Michigan, called out Meadows for that stunt.

“Just because someone has a person of color, a black person, working for them does not mean that they aren’t racist,” Tlaib said. “And it is insensitive . . . the fact that someone would actually use a prop, a black woman in this chamber, in this committee, is alone racist in itself.”

Meadows went nuts, interrupting Tlaib to demand that her comments be stricken from the record. Tearfully, he invoked his nieces and nephews, and his friendship with committee chairman Elijah Cummings. “You and I have a personal relationship that’s not based on color,” he said, pleadingly, to Cummings, who is African American.

“The fact that someone would actually use a prop, a black woman in this chamber, in this committee, is alone racist in itself.”

Cummings moved quickly to try to calm both sides. He confirmed that he is a great friend of Meadows. He asked Tlaib if she would like to restate her point, prompting her to assert that if Meadows’s act was racist, she wasn’t calling him a racist, and apologized for hurting his feelings.

And on that note, the whole hearing ended. Meadows wiped away his tears. Bruised feelings were mended. Balance was restored. The closing moments of the hearing seemed to serve as a therapy session for white men suffering from the uncomfortable feeling that their moral authority, as well as their power, is in decline. It was an apt metaphor for the whole Trump era.

“We are better than this,” Cummings intoned. He gently scolded Cohen for his past misdeeds, and expressed his hopes for “a better world” and “a better Donald Trump.”

It sounded a more than a little optimistic. The three young, progressive women of color on the committee, Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib, sat quietly, side by side, looking a little grim-faced, but determined.