Donald Trump got James Comey alone to tell him that “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.” To Idaho Republican Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID), that is evidence that Trump did not obstruct justice—because Trump said “I hope” and not “I order you.”
As Comey responded, the president of the United States calls you in and tells you what he hopes you’ll do, it comes across as an order. Yet minutes later, Sen. Marco Rubio was making a similar point—shoot, what Trump said to Comey about how Flynn is a good guy is just what he was saying publicly, so FBI agents knew what Trump wanted, anyway! And that was just part of Rubio’s attempt to show how reasonable and non-coercive Trump was throughout.
Otherwise, no surprise, Republican senators did not want to talk about obstruction of justice. Intelligence Committee Chair Richard Burr glanced off that issue early, but spent more time on … Hillary Clinton’s emails, because of course. Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) wanted to talk about the exact details of Trump not being under investigation, at least until Comey’s firing, and she was very concerned about why Comey did not set stricter boundaries and rules with Trump about his inappropriate behavior. Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) , too, thought it was very troubling that Comey did not somehow find a way to make Trump behave appropriately, as literally no one in Trump’s inner circle has been able to do.
In short, Donald Trump probably didn’t mean anything by repeatedly getting Comey alone to express his various hopes with regard to investigations into Michael Flynn and Russia, and Comey should have somehow made Trump stop being Trump.