your mind the concerned faces of of the flakes of the world, of the collins of the world. we know how they all voted in the end. what are the chances that this could end in a similar way? so i think the difference here, brian, is that the longer that you see the public sees donald trump s criminality out in the public, kind of up in the public as a top story, the worse it actually is for republicans and the better it is for democrats. there were stories upon stories about how impeachment would hurt democrats, but under nancy pelosi s leadership, she has kept to the message, made it about the facts, not made it about politics even though impeachment is a political act. but you don t even see that. the case that democrats have is so strong, and what are republicans saying? their message is, okay, yes, he did it, but it s not impeachable. but you don t see that in the polling. the polling is moving more and
investigation of his rival, by giving him something that is an official act from trump, that trump is f trying to then withhold. and, indeed, when the speaker came out and used the b word, bribery, that s the point they re trying to hammer at. that sng exactly right. part of the reasonha why they r so o focused on this question i it s an explicit thing that the framers included in the constitution to say the president engage in bribery, which they understood as i usin the powers of the office for your owne personal benefit. and katie benner, is there any peril to the president continuing to take shots at witnesses in realtime, which he did during the mueller investigation, let s not forget. absolutely. every time he does that, he puts himself in for peril. we p saw with the former ambassador to ukraine, he tweeted about her and said things shean felt were threatening.re immediately adam schiff said, we take witness intimidation very seriously. almost as if the president was wri
he s never had an agenda except for his pleef in securibelief i. that s what john bolton is. the second thing that s highly relevant is he is the national security adviser to the president of the united states, who is going to have direct, first-person knowledge of the conversation. he is out there saying this is a drug deal. he s going to the council trying to short-circuit this crazy giuliani scheme that trump and sondland are running. he s doing all these things that are now part of the legal record, and if he testifies about them, it puts the president very much directly in the center. we have motive. we have action. donald trump has the impetus for this program, and i think it raises the stakes significantly for the president. both of our guests have agreed to stay with us over the break. when we come back, the senate majority leader predicting the impeachment debate will now stretch into the new year, 2020. more on a likely collision of priorities in congress.
more, the public opinion, towards democrats, even to a point where they support impeachment and removal. and so this is where we are. let s not forget about kentucky and louisiana. that has changed this whole game as well. donald trump put impeachment on the platform in kentucky, in louisiana. kentucky, they had ads, the republican governor had ads on impeachment. so the politics on this is changing very, very quickly. karine, you are so right to bring that up. the re-election of john bel edwards just this weekend. rick, is bolton testimony a potential game-changer to you? if we see him raise his right hand? i think it s important for two big reasons. the first is john bolton has a particular space in the conservative firmament. he is a guy who spans all the way back to the reagan era, frankly before as a national security republican. he has never been veenal.
know you can make about mcconnell and those vulnerable republican senators. sure. brian, i think the number one factor of whether donald trump lives or dies politically speaking is mitch mcconnell waking up one morning and looking at the polling in maine, in colorado and arizona and other places and saying, we re going to lose the majority. and if he thinks he s going to lose the majority, this will flip over in a hot minute. the only thing mitch mcconnell cares about is preserving his majority in the senate. donald trump could be set on fire, and mitch mcconnell would stand there and go, keeping my majority. good. good deal. what would flipping over look like? would he give a signal that a vote to remove is okay? he would allow he would allow some of these people that he s kept in check, and they are in that category of republicans you would think would be right on this issue because they are people who have some integrity, who he has kept them very strongly in line, saying ou