The administration sent Jared Kushner down to talk to the Republican caucus in the Senate on Tuesday. He was there to talk about an immigration plan but he wasn’t able to answer most of the questions the senators had for him. As a result, White House adviser Stephen Miller had to interject repeatedly with his own interpretation of the policy. After the meeting was over, the Republicans were fairly unimpressed.

Even if Kushner had been able to field all their questions, Senate Republicans seemed skeptical that they would do anything with his proposal. While they’ve long wanted to overhaul the immigration system, they know it has to be bipartisan — and Kushner’s proposal would never garner Democrat support.

“I thought it was a very effective presentation,” said Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah). “It would have passed with flying colors among Republicans. But we need to get some Democrats, too.”

Things did not go better on Tuesday with the Chinese trade war. The administration dispatched vice-president Mike Pence to explain the strategy but here, too, the Republican senators got no satisfaction. And some of them decided that they weren’t going to hold their tongues anymore.

Senate Republicans expressed growing concern Tuesday that President Trump’s escalating trade war with China is hurting their constituents in rural America, ratcheting up tension between the White House and Congress on a signature issue.

Some Republican lawmakers, increasingly frustrated with Trump, took the unusual step of openly criticizing a president from their own party.

Senator Chuck Grassley has been getting ready to cut somebody for a while, and he’s getting more acerbic by the day. He impolitely pointed out that the president has the attention span of a gnat, “I’m not sure if you talk to him face to face, he hears everything you say” and suggested he might write him a letter instead of talking any further to his blank, fat face. Then he mentioned that Trump’s idiotic plan to take all the unsold soybeans in American and give them away to poor countries was likely to violate World Trade Organization rules, and added, “It’s fair to say that I want to point out that there’s problems with what he’s planning to do, and he ought to take those into consideration.”

Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas said Trump’s “plans” to save the farmers he’s ruining are “inadequate” and pleaded, “We all want to know how this story ends.” Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas “held his thumb and index finger an inch apart” when asked how much patience farmers in his state have Trump’s bullshit.

This is just background for understanding why Senate Majority Leader did not call off the dogs on Donald Trump Jr.’s perjury.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) sidestepped tensions within the caucus over Sen. Richard Burr’s (R-N.C.) decision to subpoena Donald Trump Jr., arguing that senators weren’t trying to tell the Intelligence Committee chairman how to do this job.

“None of us tell Chairman Burr how to run his committee,” McConnell told reporters on Tuesday when asked about the tensions within his caucus over the subpoena.

And, with that, Don Jr. capitulated and agreed to come back before the Senate Intelligence Committee in June and answer questions for no more than “two to four hours.” That should be more than enough time to get him to “clarify” his lies about the Moscow Trump Tower project and his first-hand knowledge of countries other than Russia offering his father’s campaign assistance.