Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Sarah Isger, your host, joining me, Jonah Goldberg,

Steve Hayes, and David French. And again, if you like what we're doing here, please subscribe to

the dispatch, go to the dispatch.com to subscribe to the newsletters. And of course, subscribe to

this podcast. Today, we are looking at the witness vote in the Senate impeachment trial,

the mid-east peace proposal that the Trump administration put forward yesterday.

Huawei doesn't need to be a crime to impeach the March for Life. There's a lot going on today.

Let's jump right in.

David, I'm going to jump right in. We are on week two of this impeachment trial.

And here at the dispatch and here at the dispatch podcast in particular, we're not really going

to run through the day-to-day hour by hour, who said what. But on the other hand,

Mitch McConnell said yesterday in a private meeting with senators that he does not have the 51

votes to block witnesses. You and I have talked about this on our advisory opinions, our legal and

cultural podcasts. And we both thought that there was a high likelihood of having senator or

witnesses. And John Bolton in particular testified after portions of his book leaked a few days ago.

I think all but assured was the phrase that you use. Yes. And you. And me two days later.

How do we feel about that prediction? The butt is still doing an awful lot of work in that sentence.

I would say this, just as a symbol, I think, of some of the confusion that's raining.

From the moment that McConnell announced that he didn't have 51 to block, or he didn't have the

votes to block. I don't know why it would take 51, but why didn't have the votes to block.

From different people, I got immediately all in a position to know three different completely

competing assessments of what's happening. Say more. One was total confusion. Nobody really knows

what's going to happen. The other one was it looks like we're sailing towards John Bolton

...