A cascade of new revelations in the Ukraine scandal have majorly amplified the pressure to approve witness testimony for President Donald Trump’s Senate trial, and the president and some of his closest defenders are freaking out. This week during an appearance on Fox News, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) feverishly attempted to shoot down the relevancy of potential witness testimony, although if Senators approved calling Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton, they could get a firsthand account of the circumstances surrounding Trump’s Ukraine scheme. After all of his previous hotheaded rants about the supposed need for closer witness testimony, Jordan’s now trying to convince observers that bringing in Bolton wouldn’t matter.
Host Martha MacCallum asked Jordan:
‘One of the things that you really hammered home during the House side of this process was that all of this was hearsay… but now you have John Bolton saying that he was in the room, he knows the president’s thinking on this, the president has flatly denied it and said it isn’t true. But how do you get past that?’
Although at this point, it’s been confirmed that the White House itself has a copy of Bolton’s book and top Republican Senators like James Lankford (Okla.) and Lindsey Graham (S.C.) have insisted that they should get to see what’s inside, Jordan still tried to insist that the reporting about John Bolton’s own account is hearsay.
He ranted:
‘Well here we have another example of hearsay! We have someone telling The New York Times what John Bolton’s manuscript supposedly says, and we’re supposed to stop the presses and we’re supposed to change everything and allow the Democrats to go from a 17-0 witness count to an 18-0 witness count? Again, it’s time to end this.’
MacCallum shot back:
‘But that’s exactly the reason that a lot of the senators want John Bolton! Let’s bring him in the room and let’s find out the truth.’
Jordan insisted that her observation — which flatly answers the issue raised in what he literally just said — supposedly doesn’t matter. He commented:
‘If John Bolton would come in, it wouldn’t change any of the underlying facts… Democrats can say we want this witness, we want that witness, we want it to be 40 to 0, we want it to be 100 to 0 — nothing will change the underlying facts, and I think the American people understand all that, and I think they want it to end.’
Watch:
He’s wrong. An overwhelming majority of Americans believe that there should be witnesses in the Senate trial. CNN released a poll just this week revealing that three-quarters of voters want witnesses. Three out of four! And that includes a full 49 percent of Republicans, which is almost a majority.
On Wednesday, Senators’ questions for the respective sides in the impeachment case began, and shortly after that, there’s set to be a vote on whether or not to hear from witnesses. Bolton has already said that he’d be willing to testify in the trial if he was subpoenaed, and some “moderate” Republicans are seemingly indicating they’re in favor of summoning him.
