Senate Republicans have come back to where they started: they’re going to stage an impeachment cover-up, and they’re not going to half-ass it. With Donald Trump in full public bully mode and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell twisting arms behind the scenes, the number of Republicans willing to vote for a fair trial is expected to be less than the necessary four—and even the one or two Republicans who vote to hear from witnesses will do so with McConnell’s permission, knowing that they aren’t changing the outcome.
This recommitment to cover-up comes as poll after poll shows anywhere from 66% to 80% of Americans—including substantial percentages of Republicans—wanting witnesses in the impeachment trial. Republican senators do not care.
Sen. Lindsey Graham’s take is that “For the sake of argument, one could assume everything attributable to John Bolton is accurate, and still the House would fall well below the standards to remove a president from office.” But we never expected Graham to stand up to the latest powerful figure he’s attached himself to in a bid for greater relevance.
”We don’t need Mr. Bolton to come in and to extend this show longer, along with any other witnesses people might want, and occupy all of our time here in the Senate for the next few weeks, maybe even months,” said Sen. John Cornyn. Heaven forbid the Senate waste its time on frivolous things like finding out how far the president went to undermine American democracy!
Sen. Susan Collins may vote to hear witnesses, with McConnell’s permission, so she can keep duping news outlets like The New York Times into writing long-discredited nonsense like that “She is the rare member of her party who still seeks to appeal to a broad range of independent and even Democratic voters as well as Republicans.”
Senate Republicans have made it clear: They will acquit Trump even if they are somehow forced to acknowledge that he did what all the evidence shows he did, withholding military aid to Ukraine to pressure the nation to help him out in the 2020 elections by digging up dirt—or at least publicly announcing that there was dirt to be dug—on the Democratic opponent he saw as most threatening at that time. Senate Republicans don’t care what he did. They just want to stay in power, and they think Trump is their best bet for doing so. And even though voters have seen through their intent to cover up, they’re going through with it anyway, because apparently Republicans are convinced it’s better to have people know you’re covering something up than to have them knowing what lies under the covers.