he s chatting with somebody. something gets in his mind and it goes into his mind and out of his tweet. well, speaker pelosi s gambit of holding the articles isn t is a high-risk strategy. and one of the ways that it could come out well for her is if president trump puts pressure on mitch mcconnell to get the trial going. and so maybe one reason the aides are worried is that during this down period, the the president is going to lose discipline. and start fuming about the fact that maybe there won t be a trial. and maybe he won t be acquitted. and maybe he ll start saying things that will compromise mitch mcconnell s strategy. after all, mitch mcconnell is really good at saying no. we saw it with the merit garland story. he basically stood there while people were arguing they had a
moral responsibility to to at least have hearings for president obama s nominee. he didn t care. in this case, trump could put pressure on him. right. in a sense, you re seeing that. mcconnell s i don t care if i ever see those articles so what do you have leverage if you re trying to send me something i don t want? and trump s going i want it now. i want an immediate trial e exclamation point. joe, you can see the problem right there of two roads diverging. but i guess the big question is how much harm can he do? well, what pelosi s done is expose the rift between and brought it out in into the public. he can make his life much more difficult for the six or seven vulnerable republican senators. you know, who are up for re-election this year, which is what mcconnell is most concerned about. he wants to remain majority leader. at the end of the day, he doesn t care if the president gets re-elected. and those are the senators, by the way, who may vote to acquit him eventually b
screws that up by free wheeling while he s on vacation. he got on air force one, joe, and all he said merry christmas. that s a dig at democrats somehow. it s a separate statement and he was able to keep it at that. one of the press secretaries for george w. bush, ari fleischer. we all know and like him had this to say about democrats withholding the articles of impeachment and he did not mince words. this is the dumbest thing the democrats have ever done. just send the documents over if it s a serious impeachment and if it s not just admit that it s gamesmanship and knock off the talk of impartiality and fair trials. know it s all political. as long as ari is admitting that mitch mcconnell is not impartial and lindsay graham has directly said he s not impartial, it goes both ways. does he have a point? i don t think democrats will spend a lot of times worrying about fox news analysts advice.
meanwhile, other house democrats seem to be suggesting they d prefer never to transmit the articles. fine with me. i m not sure what leverage there is in refraining from sending us something we do not want. but is it pelosi who is bluffing? or mcconnell? because even if mcconnell really doesn t want the articles, the person he pledges fealty to desperately wants a senate trial now thinking he could get off quickly. we look forward to getting on to the senate. frankly, i want a trial. we ll get a fair shake in the senate. and when? well, on twitter, he makes it very clear, i want an immediate trial. exclamation point. so trump is the one undermining mcconnell s leverage. manu, where do things stand tonight? at a standoff, erin, but even
if those come out in tweets that undercut what mcconnell is trying to do with this deal making it can start with the hand of the democrats that want to see this trial go ahead that s want as advantageous. are you hearing about mitch mcconnell s true feelings? mitch mcconnell is very closed book and he doesn t speak when the president is undercutting him. for months and months, if not years, you ve heard senate republicans express frustration with his twitter habits and either undercut his own time and undercut the defense that they re trying to make him and they complicate the republican efforts to rally around him and that s so vital right now going into this trial which we all expect will happen to be in lockstep. the gop is getting blowback from democrats about saying those things and that they re going to try to arrange this to be good as possible and if the president