Unless you’re a MAGA cultist, or a Senate Republican, you’re surely aware that conservative stalwart John Bolton has dropped a bomb on the impeachment trial.
Thanks to Bolton’s impending book, we now have the precise piece of evidence that Trump’s legal eagles claimed did not exist – eyewitness proof that Trump, in Bolton’s words, sought all last summer to squeeze Ukraine, to freeze the military aid it needed to fight Russia, “until officials there helped with investigations into Democrats including the Bidens.” Bolton, who is well known in national security circles for taking copious notes, says Trump told him that “he preferred sending no assistance to Ukraine until officials turned over all materials…that related to Mr. Biden and supporters of Mrs. Clinton in Ukraine.”
Bingo. Colluding with (indeed, extorting) a foreign power for domestic political dirt is at the core of the impeachment articles. Which is why Bolton needs to testify under oath, and open himself to questioning. Which he’s willing to do. Which makes him the ideal witness in what’s supposed to be a real trial.
This, of course, is a big problem for Senate Republicans, most of whom are committed to a speedy sham. Granted, there are a few hairline cracks in the wall of shame; Susan Collins, Mitt Romney, and Lisa Murkowski are mouthing new noises about maybe voting to hear witnesses (a fourth Republican would be needed for a pro-witness majority). Meanwhile, outside the Senate bubble, conservative commentator Rich Lowry says that “the substantive case against calling John Bolton as a witness has collapsed.” And on the Fox News website, former Bolton chief of staff Fred Fleitz is telling Republicans that Bolton is “a man of great integrity.”
Nevertheless, we learned long ago never to underestimate the wily denialism of the Grand Ostrich Party. Trump has schooled his suckers on the fundamentals of magical thinking – as best evidenced by an Orwellian remark he actually uttered in 2018: “What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”
So it wouldn’t shock me a whit, in the days ahead, if most Senate Republicans flee to their bunkers, parrying press questions with bursts of self-satire:
“I’ve never met this Bolton person you’re asking me about, so I can’t confirm he really exists, and even if he does, who cares about Ukraine, which I bet you liberal media hacks can’t find on a map, and I happen to have a blank map right here.”
“Bolton is just more partisan hearsay, what he’s saying, because I personally wasn’t there to hear what he says our President said to him.”
“He’s trying to make money off a book, and nowhere in the Constitution does it specify – there’s not even one word – that a president can be falsely accused of high crimes and misdemeanors by someone who has a contract with Simon & Schuster.”
“I haven’t seen a scintilla of evidence that Bolton was under oath when he wrote his book for Simon & Schuster, which is based in smug liberal elitist New York.”
“I haven’t read any of the news stories about Bolton, but there’s really nothing new in them.”
“I’ve read all the stories, and there’s really nothing new in them. Because we already knew that President Trump told Gordon Sondland that he wanted Ukraine to announce a probe of Biden, and we already knew that Mick Mulvaney, during a press conference, connected the aid freeze to our President’s desire for dirt — wait! No! Let me rephrase everything, that was all off the record.”
“I’d love to take your questions about Bolton, but I suddenly need to pee – hey, hold that elevator door!”
“If I were to decide to appease the left by voting to hear Bolton as a witness, we would first have to depose him in secret, and if it turns out that he’s credible, it would mean that other people need to testify, which means this whole thing will take so long that it will spoil our President’s State of the Union speech next Tuesday, and The American People don’t want that.”
“Our President has tweeted that the Democrat House never even asked Bolton to testify, and even if it turns out that the House did ask Bolton to testify, I believe that our President sincerely believes in his mind that what he tweeted was true.”
“I believe that our President always hires the best people, but in this particular case, Bolton is a washed-up embittered nobody.”
“I grant you that Bolton has been a respected conservative public servant for many decades, that he has a lot of credibility, and it appears that everything he wants to testify about is true – but so what if it is? Get over it. If you read the Constitution between the lines, as I have, it clearly implies that a president who’s making American great can be removed only for the crime of shooting someone on Fifth Avenue. Hash tag – where’s the gun?”
“I’d like to remind all you people in the fake-news press that the words ‘Bolton’ and ‘Obama’ have the same number of letters. Same thing with ‘Bolton’ and ‘Benghazi.’ You should look into that.”