The big political news this weekend was a leak of the draft of John Bolton’s upcoming book, where he basically fingers everybody, including Trump, in the Ukraine scandal.
You might remember a few months back where the House impeachment inquiry subpoenaed Bolton to testify and Bolton told the House to take a long walk off a short pier and ignored the subpoena. The House chose not to enforce the subpoena, presumably because they didn’t want to spend the next two years fighting Trump in court over it.
It seems to have turned out that Bolton didn’t ignore the subpoena because Trump told him to, he did it because he didn’t want spoilers getting out for his book.
So, what’s this mean for the ongoing impeachment trial, which should be starting up again here shortly? Nobody knows.
Well, that’s not strictly true. I mean, we know what’s going to happen. The Republican senators will find some way to weasel out of calling witnesses for the trial despite the Bolton news, and then when it comes time, they’ll vote to acquit and Trump will remain president for the remainder of his term.
The GOP senators are so deep into this sunk-cost fallacy/Stockholm Syndrome mess they’ve created for themselves that I don’t think they can tell it’s time to cut bait, dump Trump, and salvage what they can from Pence.
Assuming they could even save Pence from this mess, which is debatable. I don’t think they can, personally. I think Pence is dirty, too, and calling witnesses would show that, and Pence would have to resign or something.
I think we’re dealing with two kinds of Senate Republicans here: The first kind, which has been mainlining Fox News for so long that they believe that Trump is actually innocent and that all this is some kind of corrupt Democrat play; and the second kind, who know what’s up and are themselves dirty and/or complicit. Neither kind will permit witnesses being called in the impeachment trial, and neither kind will vote to remove Trump from office.
I hope I’m wrong. I want to be wrong about that. But I don’t think I am. I don’t think there’s even one single Republican senator who would vote against Trump, not even to save their own stupid asses.
If you have a Republican senator, you should give them a call this morning and read them the riot act. I don’t know if it’ll do any good, but they should at least know their constituents are pissed about this.
Then, when you get off the phone, you should look up your local Democratic party office and volunteer to help them whup your local Republicans in the next election.
Image credit: John Bolton, by Gage Skidmore. (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Notes & Thoughts 