Smoking Gun Control
The call was perfect. Well, the call wasn’t quite perfect, but it wasn’t what people are accusing it of being. OK, the call sucked, but none of this is impeachable and past precedents mean nothing (and neither does anything else). Yes, the goalposts are moving. Susan B Glasser in The New Yorker: The Bolton Bombshell and the Unwaveringly Pro-Trump GOP. “At any other moment in Washington in my lifetime, I would have predicted with absolute confidence that the Bolton revelation would force Republican senators to switch their position and support witnesses. And not just a few, but almost all of them. But this is now, and the unthinkable and inconceivable have become increasingly routine.” (What wasn’t routine was Alan Dershowitz doing a complete reversal of past positions and Ken Starr actually complaining that there are too many impeachments, a claim that only works with a laugh track.)
+ The second leak from the Bolton manuscript indicates that he “told Attorney General William P. Barr last year that he had concerns that President Trump was effectively granting personal favors to the autocratic leaders of Turkey and China.”
+ Graeme Wood in The Atlantic: John Bolton Knows What He’s Doing. “For Bolton to surrender these advantages for free, to the advantage not of himself but of liberals with whom he agrees on little, would be for Bolton to stop being Bolton.” Speaking of people who don’t agree on much with liberals, John Kelly thinks Bolton should testify. “If John Bolton says that in the book I believe John Bolton.”
+ Giuliani furious Democrats want testimony from Bolton but not him: “They are afraid of my physical presence.” (Editor’s note: Everyone is.)
+ And here’s a random, totally unrelated fun fact: Rudy Giuliani’s son makes $95,000 working as sports liaison for the White House.