Eh? What’s that you say? Bolton’s in play? Huh?
I’m playing catch-up here, because I have, of course, attempted to tune the whole business out, and avoided watching the Republican’s impeachment defence of Trump like it’d give me a dose of coronavirus. Sadly, even when you aren’t glued to the goggle box it’s impossible to avoid catching snippets here and there, especially on Twitter, where I follow a number of political pundits and news feeds. Cue the acid reflux. Anything offered in defence of the utterly indefensible was bound to infuriate me, but from what little I’ve reluctantly gathered, these guys have really been outdoing themselves. White House Counsel Cipollone, who’s already lied through his teeth, and who’s ethically compromised by acting as defence counsel when he’s a frigging material witness (and I’d wager co-conspirator), had the gall to accuse the Democrats of attempted election rigging. I read that and heard myself muttering, involuntarily, oh get the fuck outtahere – the slime-wads are contending that the constitutional process being invoked in response to Trump’s scheme to rig the next election is, wait for it, the actual and oh-so-diabolical election rigging! I mean geez, if Trump is thrown out of office, look, that’ll completely skew the result next November, right? Yup, it sure would, Pat! You got that right! Jesus Beverly Christ, the balls! And then Deputy White House Counsel Michael Purpura uttered this little gem:
Not a single witness testified that the President himself said there was any connection between any investigations and security assistance, a Presidential meeting, or anything else.
Yes, Michael, that’s true! We know! However, that’s because Trump unlawfully ordered all the witnesses to refuse to testify before the House, and Mitch won’t allow them to be called in the Senate – that sound about right? Michael?
Well, it’s starting to look like they’ll have to abandon their “nothing even happened” argument and pivot to the previously floated “yeah so what, it doesn’t matter anyway” defence, since all of a sudden, and doubtless to McConnell’s flop-sweating horror, the heat is on to call witnesses after all, and hear the direct, firsthand evidence that Donald and Mitch have striven so mightily to suppress – this because, God help them, the text of John Bolton’s pending book has leaked, and whaddyaknow, Chumly says exactly what we all knew perfectly well he was going to say. Trump told him personally, face to face, that he wanted vital aid to Ukraine withheld until they knuckled under, did his political dirty work, and cooked up something on the Bidens for him. We all knew this. Nobody really doubted it. But the prospect of Bolton sitting there, all bland, irrebuttable, and matter-of-fact, testifying about it…
Oh boy, does this clamp Mitch’s balls in a vise. His wavering Senators, the ones like Collins and Murkowski who don’t have safe seats (‘cuz dammitall, you can’t gerrymander Senate districts, because Senators are elected by statewide vote), now face a terrible dilemma. Trump has promised to mount their heads on pikes if they vote against his interests, and if they do they’re quite likely to get “primaried” and lose their nominations in November. If, however, they stand with Moscow Mitch and Fat Donny, they’ll have to face disgruntled voters while going up against Democratic candidates who’ll run ads 24/7 accusing them of abetting a dastardly cover-up, which is just exactly what they’ll have done. It’ll only look worse for them, too, when all the evidence comes out anyway, after they’ve rendered their chickenshit acquittal, and the way things are going, Bolton’s exposé might not be the half of it. Just yesterday we heard a tape recording of Trump at some dinner at his scum-hive hotel, making mafia-style threats about Ambassador Yovanovitch to the cronies he claims he doesn’t know. Who knows how much more there is where that came from? Is it better to find out now, or wait until after Trump has won his faux vindication? None of the available options bears thinking about. They have to allow witness testimony now. Yet they can’t.
This is just delicious. I just eat this with a spoon. Can you imagine Bolton sitting there, calmly spilling all the beans and letting all those mangy, yowling cats out of their burlap bags, supported, one expects, by copious contemporaneous notes and memoranda? Can you envision what might come next? Will the Dems petition Chief Justice Roberts to subpoena Pompeo and Mulvaney? Will those scoundrels try to defy the subpoenas? Will Cipollone, who, we now know, has himself seen the transcript of Bolton’s book – it’s come out that the draft was delivered for a standard classified information review to the White House over a month ago, and White House counsel must have been tasked to go over it with a fine-toothed comb – be censured for misleading the Senate with a defence he knew to be false? Then what? After all that, with Trump’s guilt established beyond any remotely plausible doubt, do the lick-spittles vote to acquit anyway? They will. They’ll do it. But Mitch might have to issue barf bags before the clerk calls the roll.
Or will the queasy Republicans grit their teeth, shut their eyes, hold the line against witnesses and persist in the cover-up, leaving it to fate how much comes out after they vote to let Trump off the hook, and what that does to their election prospects? More barf bags indicated.
Choose your poison, Mitch! What’ll it be, we blast your kneecaps with a sawed-off, or put out your eyes with a red-hot poker? Oh, I love this. I just love it all to pieces, and I’ll tell you what: I never in my life imagined I’d want to kiss that sumbitch Bolton on the lips. He could still surprise us, I guess, even if he’s called – you must never, ever, put your faith in the Evil Walrus – but if he does show up to testify, and lays it all out in person the way his book seems to, I’m writing him a love letter that includes an offer to meet him in the Holiday Inn of his choosing, where I’ll be happy to plant big sloppy wet ones on both of his flabby old lily-white butt cheeks.
Watch, now: if Mitch can’t stop a vote to approve the calling of witnesses, what do you bet he tries to force Bolton’s testimony to occur behind closed doors for “national security reasons”? Will Roberts let him? If he won’t, do they dare vote to overrule him? Man, this really could get interesting. Meanwhile, is there anything at all so delightful as the prospect of Mitch Fucking McConnell standing there all jowly and stammering, pissing his baggy pants?
the needlefish 