On her 12 p.m. ET hour MSNBC show on Tuesday, host Andrea Mitchell woefully complained that the reopened FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s e-mails was like a “punch in the gut” to the Democratic nominee and prevented the campaign from pushing an “uplifting message” in the final days before the election.

Commiserating with the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein, Mitchell lamented: “I’ve got to tell you that the mood on this campaign plane has changed dramatically since Iowa, since Friday, when they were just hit, I’ve described as a punch in the gut. This unexpected FBI turn, going back to the e-mail controversy which they thought they had put to rest. They were already moving towards an uplifting message for the closing days....they’re going back to attack mode.”

Stein sympathized: “...they are a bit shell-shocked. They obviously did not want to spend the closing week going to war with the FBI director. But it’s the hand they’ve been dealt...”

He then touted: “They do feel semi-confident that they’ve turned the conversation a bit away from the investigation and more to the conduct of FBI director Comey. But it’s not the, you know, uplifting, promising message that they wanted to close out on.”

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The reason for that confidence is that the press happily did the Clinton campaign’s bidding in bashing Comey by a 3 to 1 margin in coverage of the e-mail scandal development.

Here is a transcript of the November 1 exchange: