President Donald Trump is clearly paranoid ahead of a seemingly soon upcoming vote in the Senate on whether or not to hear from witnesses in his impeachment trial that is currently unfolding in the chamber. Pressure on at least some Republicans to vote in favor of witnesses has mounted following former Trump national security adviser John Bolton’s revelation that Trump explicitly tied military aid for Ukraine to whether or not the country investigated his domestic political opponents, which confirms the bribery scheme at the heart of the case. On Wednesday, no matter the mounting evidence against him, Trump rushed to point out the deliberations of just a few moderate Democrats as supposed evidence of his innocence.
He tweeted:
‘There is much talk that certain Democrats are going to be voting with Republicans on the Impeachment Hoax, so that the Senate can get back to the business of taking care of the American people. Sorry, but Cryin’ Chuck Schumer will never let that happen!’
In fact, although he used this same argument after just a couple of Democrats defected from the main party line during the original vote to impeach him, taking away a couple of votes does not magically make the evidence against Trump go away, although that seems to be the line of argument Trump is going with here. Republicans have themselves been the ones ensuring a largely party line-defined vote with their absolute refusals to break with Trump.
In the House, the few Democrats who didn’t approve both articles of impeachment included Minnesota “moderate” Collin Peterson and New Jersey’s Jeff Van Drew — who re-registered as a Republican after the vote and publicly told Trump that he had his “undying” loyalty. Now, POLITICO reports that Dems including West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema, and Alabama’s Doug Jones are apparently not settled on how they’ll vote.
On Wednesday morning, besides his rants about the impeachment proceedings, Trump also addressed the upcoming vote in the House on a measure that would flatly repeal the 2002 authorization for the Iraq War, which has been used to justify a lot of barely tangentially related military excursions in the time since.
On the Iraq War Resolution being voted on tomorrow in the House of Represenatives, we are down to 5000 soldiers, and going down, and I want everyone, Republican and Democrat, to vote their HEART!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 29, 2020
Check out Twitter’s response….
