WASHINGTON — President Trump had already given his blessing: Pull the bill. Speaker Paul Ryan, bound for the basement of the Capitol, was preparing to deliver the news to his conference.

And inside the House gallery on Friday, still teeming with lawmakers debating legislation that would never reach the floor, Gary and Tammy Comes, visitors from Vero Beach, Fla., were straining to puzzle out the shouting just after 3:30 p.m.

“Vote! Vote! Vote!’’ came the lawmakers’ chants, echoing as the body suddenly adjourned, setting in motion a whirring of members, journalists, and assorted guests wandering through the Capitol, conscripted to spend the next several minutes — days? election cycles? — making sense of what had happened.

“He’s like the coach,’’ Gary Comes, a 51-year-old Trump voter, said of his president as he left, lamenting the finale of a two-day education in legislative incineration. “Why do you want the coach to lose?’’

They were not alone in this hour of congressional processing, shuffling toward the exits with more questions than insights.

Republican members fumed loudest, racing into elevators after their conference meeting.

“Don’t bother to go,’’ Representative Darrell Issa of California told a late-arriving colleague.

It was over, he said, turning a thumb down.

Staff members digested the moment in varying degrees of distress.

“Health care is hard,’’ one young woman said quietly to a peer.

Building employees gossiped.

“Ryan did an interview downstairs,’’ one man told a police officer on his way out, referring to Ryan’s session with reporters after 4 p.m. “Said Obamacare’s the law of the land.’’

Others drifted through the halls with little sense of the surrounding tumult. Workers pushed carts into closets, eager to complete their week. Music blared from the headphones of high school visitors waiting by a bathroom.

Then there were the Comeses. They had not planned to tour the Capitol during their vacation here. But sensing something momentous afoot, they first wandered into the gallery Thursday.

“They adjourned trying to debate what time to start this morning,’’ said Tammy Comes, 47, marveling at the inanity.

“They cited some kind of rule,’’ her husband added, shrugging beneath a National Hot Rod Association hoodie.

The two are not Trump die-hards, they suggested, describing the 2016 election as a battle of relative evils.

But they expressed satisfaction with Trump’s efforts so far.

“He’s doing good,’’ Tammy Comes said. “I think more people need to support him.’’

“It’s a complicated issue,’’ Gary Comes noted, a partial echo of Trump’s recent musing that “nobody knew that health care could be so complicated.’’

Still, the couple, returning soon to their Florida log cabin — “our neighbors call us Lincolns,’’ said Gary Comes — said their attendance Friday had been instructive.

“It’s cool to be a part of history, even if it didn’t happen,’’ he said.