GOP Senators got suckered by con man Donald Trump

BALTIMORE – Are you happy now, suckers?

And, by “suckers,” I naturally refer to those 51 Republican senators who got played again by the con man President Donald Trump. He got them to vote for him in the impeachment trial, no matter the evidence stacked against Trump – and no matter the evidence that was first hidden from senators inside the White House itself.

Keep something in mind, folks, about the bombshell manuscript by former national security advisor John Bolton: The White House got a copy of it Dec. 30. That’s more than a month ago.

And we’re supposed to believe nobody in leaky Washington told anybody else in Washington what it said.

They just sat on it. And, while they sat on it, they asked all these Republicans, led by the ever-manipulative Mitch McConnell, to go out on a limb for this president, to insist before the entire nation that he’d done nothing wrong, certainly nothing to warrant impeachment.

But the White House folks weren’t telling these senators (or anybody else) everything they knew – especially not everything from the Bolton book.

Back on Dec. 30, National Security Council staff members reviewed the Bolton manuscript. And then they briefed White House officials. Among those briefed was Trump’s chief counsel, Pat A. Cipollone. He’s the one who was out there defending Trump in the Senate impeachment “trial.”

But Cipollone, like all the president’s impeachment lawyers, says, Gee whiz.

Gee whiz, they never knew the most compelling news from the Bolton book until it was reported last week in the New York Times.

Gee whiz, they never knew the direct, first-hand allegation that Trump told Bolton, face to face, to help him sell the Ukrainian deal

Everybody already knew about the deal itself, of course – the one already confirmed a few weeks ago in House testimony from a whole bunch of American career public servants, the one about Trump trying to swap a phony investigation into Joe Biden in exchange for $391 million in military aid to a beleaguered Ukraine which had already lost roughly 14,000 lives as they try to hold off Russian incursion.

These Republican suckers were willing to go to bat for Trump, knowing all of this.

But they didn’t know what was still being hidden from them: the contents of Bolton’s book – the one that White House officials had been sitting on since Dec. 30 – in which Bolton says Trump directly told him to help sell the Ukraine deal.

And Bolton, knowing it was wrong, knowing it was a swap of political gain for human lives, knowing American presidents don’t swap foreign intervention (until Trump) for political gain, said no.

And that’s not all Bolton said.

He called it “a drug deal.” He said Trump and his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, who was trying to swing the deal for him, were going to blow everybody up “like a hand grenade.”

And all these Republican suckers, not knowing the full story – which still hasn’t emerged, though the White House has had Bolton’s manuscript now for more than a month – they went to bat for Trump in their ignorance and their loyalty.

But, having said all this, let’s admit something: We’re giving these senators the benefit of the doubt by calling them “suckers.”

We’re giving them credit for their alleged ignorance.

We’re saying they only defended him as thoroughly as they did, and as unquestioningly as they did, because they didn’t know all the facts.

But here’s another fact: by now, the record’s pretty clear. Even if they’d known about the Bolton allegations, even if they’d known from Trump’s own mouth that he played Ukrainian human lives against his own election chances – they’d still have defended him.

So who are the real suckers here?

Michael Olesker

Michael Olesker, columnist for the News American, Baltimore Sun, and Baltimore Examiner has spent a quarter of a century writing about the city he loves.He is the author of several books, including Michael Olesker’s Baltimore: If You Live Here, You’re Home, Journeys to the Heart of Baltimore, and The Colts’ Baltimore: A City and Its Love Affair in the 1950s, all published by Johns Hopkins Press.