So the Republicans know that John Bolton’s book implicates Trump directly in the scheme to extort the President of the Ukraine to make up dirt on Trump’s potential 2020 opponent, Joe Biden. They know Bolton’s testimony is central to the trial currently going on in the Senate, AND they are not going to allow testimony because they fear Trump’s wrath more than they feel an obligation to their Constitutional duty. How can this be? There is only one reasonable answer.
Republicans are terrified of Trump!!
This is the meme.
Republicans are truly terrified. This explains the disturbing turnaround of Lindsey Graham and others who opposed Trump in the 2016 primary. They are terrified of what will happen to their districts and to their campaigns if Trump, as he predictably will, exacts his revenge against them for their Senate vote.
This is the point that Democrats need to be making. This is where Republicans, who still have a shred of dignity, may finally draw the line:
Do they have the courage to stand up to Trump in what is likely the last chance they have before he comes out of the other side of the impeachment process in a vengeful fury?
Sometimes it needs to be pointed out that the senators truly have no clothes, and it seems to me a more powerful argument to simply lay out how terrified Republicans are of Trump—and how much that is exactly what a totalitarian dictator would be trying to invoke in his followers.
Republicans are refusing to allow witnesses only because they are too scared of Trump to oppose his will. And they will either stand up now or be forever counted among those who capitulated to Trump in America’s hour of need.