The Mother Jones Podcast: Trump Is Going to Get off Scot-Free—or Is He?

“I think this whole process has been bad for Trump and bad for them.”

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There’s still more milk to spill on the Senate floor. President Donald Trump’s impeachment defense has rested after less than 24 hours of astonishing misrepresentations of the the facts, and vitriolic broadsides against the process and the Democrats. So now it’s time to tally the votes: Can Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s majority hold to prevent new witnesses from being called? He seems worried, telling a private meeting of his lawmakers on Tuesday night he didn’t yet have the numbers to stop it. So, where does that leave us? 

“Of course, the big question is: Will there be witnesses?” David Corn tells the Mother Jones Podcast.

In these final days and hours of the Trump impeachment saga, bombshells keep exploding. A leak this week of former National Security Adviser John Bolton’s book manuscript heightened pressure on the handful of Republican senators able to green-light new evidence, or allow the trial to come to a speedy conclusion. “Here we have John Bolton, who is apparently prepared to testify,” says Corn. “And according to the book he will say, ‘Hey! He told me! I’m your first-hand witness. I heard this directly from the president. Quid pro quo, pressuring, muscling, extortion, whatever you want to call it. I heard it!'”

Listen to Washington DC Bureau Chief David Corn discuss John Bolton, breakaway Republican senators, and the final days of the Trump impeachment saga, on this week’s episode of the Mother Jones Podcast:

And then what? On today’s show, you’ll hear Mother Jones’ DC bureau chief David Corn attempt to answer the burning questions at the center of this week’s drama: What does John Bolton know? Will any Republican Senators defect from the party line? And even, if all this happens, will it matter?

“I don’t know how many Americans really need to put themselves through the act of watching Kenneth Starr go on and on in his shower of hypocrisy,” says Corn. “If you were to call witnesses, if you have John Bolton up there or bring back Gordon Sondland—you know, the stars of the House impeachment inquiry—people would certainly tune in to watch that.”

The Trump presidency has been marked by scandal, corruption, and dirty deals. These next few days will determine if the most serious Constitutional action possible to remove a president from office will become just another Trump scandal he emerges from relatively unscathed, or if this will be a real moment of reckoning.  

“I think this whole process has been bad for Trump and bad for them,” says Corn. “Unless you’re part of the Trump cult, the fact pattern established by the hearings is pretty clear. It made the Republicans turn themselves into pretzels to try to defend this.” 

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

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AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

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