The entire hearing—held in the Trump-friendly confines of the Senate, with Republican leader Mitch McConnell helming the affair—was designed from the outset as a counter to the earlier briefing that Pierson gave to the House Intelligence Committee. As The Washington Post reports, the director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, William Evanina, “tempered” the early statements from Pierson. He did so in an exchange with McConnell that was so clearly designed to generate a nothing-to-see-here response that a second official present said, “Both question and response were clearly pre-drafted.”

The call-and-response between McConnell and Evanina generated just the statement that Republicans wanted to carry out of the hearing: Russia has done nothing to help Trump. And all of them seemed prepared to ignore the other half of the message that came from the same hearing: Trump has done nothing to keep Russia out.

Evanina wasn’t alone at the hearing. Other officials, including NSA Director Paul Nakasone and FBI Director Christopher Wray, were mum when it came to describing anything that the United States has actually done to secure the election in 2020. And neither of them offered any kind of assurance that the kind of threats that Pierson had warned about in the earlier hearing—and in earlier public statements—had been addressed. So if one official was claiming that Russia has done nothing overtly so far to help Trump, the rest were admitting that the U.S. has done nothing to stop it.

Or, as the Post put it, Nakasone and Wray “did not give senators an impression that the Trump administration has a solid grip on dealing with foreign interference in the coming election.”

Meanwhile, on the other side of the hill, the briefing did not go as smoothly. Evanina’s attempt to press the same line ran into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff, who refused to play the game and pointed out that the whole appearance seemed designed to push back against the assessment delivered by Pierson. The result was a hearing in which participants were much less willing to call it a day when Evanina gave his statements.

And what did Trump’s new acting director of national intelligence have to say about all this? Exactly nothing. Because, as we mentioned, Grenell was a no-show.

Grenell, who split his time as German ambassador between sending out tweets promoting neo-fascist leaders in Europe and sending out tweets promoting conspiracy theories, “declined” to attend the hearings in either the Senate or the House. According to the man Trump put in charge of national intelligence, he was “apprehensive” about being prepared enough to address the subjects of the hearing. Which is terrifying … but also kind of refreshing. At least Grenell seems to realize that he’s incompetent. That’s more than can be said for Trump.