impeachment lawyers take questions from Republicans and Democrats.

Alan Dershowitz finds himself under fire after explaining the nature of

impeachable activity and Republicans mull more witnesses.

I'm Ben Shapiro. This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

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Okay, so tomorrow is Decision Day. Big Friday vote expected on whether Republicans will allow further witnesses. It is up in the air as to how this goes. I mean, it's absolutely unclear.

According to the New York Post,

President Trump's impeachment defense team expects a Friday cliffhanger when senators vote on whether to call witnesses in Trump's trial. If Democrats find four Republicans to vote for witnesses, the trial could stretch until March. If they fail, Trump would likely be acquitted. Now, I think that's a bit of an exaggeration. I think that if the Republicans decide to allow witnesses, then basically they allow like two witnesses. I think it's probably John Bolton,

maybe Mick Mulvaney, and that's it. I think that's a bit of an exaggeration. I think that if the Republicans decide to allow witnesses, then basically they allow like two witnesses.

I think it's probably John Bolton, maybe Mick Mulvaney, and that's it. I think they say everybody who already testified, we already have their testimony. We don't need to cut. We don't need to hear from Gordon Sondland again. It would be like Joe, it might be Hunter Biden and John Bolton and like Mick Mulvaney, and that's it. So no, I don't think this is going to stretch for another

month just to hash out all of the witness activity. Trump-confident Mark Meadows told the New York Post

he doesn't believe there will be clarity on the outcome until Friday of this week. Right now,

there are basically three senators who are fairly certain to vote in favor of more witnesses.

That would be Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. That would be Mitt Romney of Utah and that would be Susan Collins of Maine. Some Republican senators, according to the New York Post, were optimistic after the McConnell-Morkowski talk, which followed a conference meeting of senators on Tuesday when McConnell said he didn't yet have the votes to block witnesses. Markowski was tight-lipped after meeting with McConnell telling reporters I had a meeting with leader McConnell, but I'm not going to talk to you about it. She said, I've been talking with the folks in the cloakroom about what the universe is to see how we can supplement that with regard to witnesses. Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi told the New York Post that the feeling among Republicans was, quote, unquote, pretty good. He said, obviously we need to make a decision at this point, whether to drag the foregone conclusion out for another four to six weeks. We know what the outcome is. It's just a question of how long it's going to last, it's Senator Richard Shelby, Republican of Alabama. Now, here is the problem. I mean, seriously, if you all believe, the same thing that I believe, right? I said this yesterday on the show. if you believe that the impeachment outcome is a foregone conclusion because John Bolton is not going to get up and testify, he's just not going to get up and testify that President Trump said explicitly to him, I want you condition Ukraine aid on them making up information about Joe Biden for purposes of 2020, which is the only thing that would be impeachable here. If that's not the case, then why not get all of this out in the open now?

Because otherwise, it's just going to leak, right? We're just going to have more leaks. And then it's not just going to implicate Trump. Like, look, attacks on Trump. Trump is Teflon. More than Teflon, Trump is kind of a mud monster in the sense that if you throw more mud at him. He's already made a mud. So who cares? He's made a mud. Look, there's more mud on him. Whatever.

That's how everybody has treated Trump since the beginning. And rightly so, because nothing is new in the world of Trump's him. Everything is baked into that cake. There is sugar. There's caramel and there's dog poop. Like everything is in that cake. Everything. So that's not going to hurt Trump, but it could hurt incumbent senators in purple states. this is what I was talking about yesterday. If you're worried about anything beyond Trump, and you should be, because the Republicans are vulnerable in the Senate, they have a very slim majority in the Senate. If Trump is reelected, and he doesn't have the Senate and he doesn't have the House, nothing is getting done. If Trump is not reelected and the Republicans lose the Senate and the Republicans don't retake the house, then you have a world of hurt. You got President Bernie Sanders with a congressional majority. I mean, God bless it. I mean, that would just be the worst of all available world. So that means that the prudent move here is to hedge your bets to the extent that you can. And that would presumably mean allowing a couple of witnesses to be called, including Hunter Biden, who would in fact be damaging to Joe Biden, and then you move on because Trump is not getting impeached or removed, at least, over any of this. Senator Tom Tillis of North Carolina angrily denied reports that he told fellow Republicans on Tuesday night that extending Trump's trial would hurt vulnerable GOP incumbents. He said, whoever went out of that meeting and whoever informed the press was either misled, lying, or an imbecile. I didn't say that. I've been very firm on this. I have no problem whatsoever with voting no on witnesses. Four Republicans, including Murkowski, have expressed interest in possibly hearing from witnesses. Retiring Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee said he intended to make up his mind after we've heard the questions and the answers to the questions on Thursday.

Mitt Romney, of course, has been the clearest in saying that he is interested in hearing from some of the witnesses.

Now, the Trump team is basically saying that they're trying to make a split case, and I'm

not sure it's a great case.

On the one hand, they're saying that we don't need to hear from witnesses. On the other hand, they are saying that the Democrats don't have enough information because they didn't hear from witnesses. That's kind of a weird take. What you want to say is the Democrats came with all they could. They didn't call witnesses because they knew there was not going to be anything there.

And why would we call more witnesses when the Democrats say that they present a complete case? Right. Instead, the Republicans are making a slightly different case, which is less well articulated. And that case is that the Democrats didn't do their job. If they had done their job and heard from witnesses, then we wouldn't have to do this whole shabang at all. But the implication is that the Democrats' failure was not that they did a complete report and just didn't end up with the goods. Their failure was that they didn't even do a complete report, which sort of suggests that, okay, well, now you could do a complete report, right? I mean, could have more witnesses. Patrick Philbin, who's one of the lawyers for President Trump, said as much yesterday in the closing arguments that basically yesterday was a day when the impeachment managers for the House, that would be the Democrats, like Schiff, and the Trump team, that would be Patrick Philbin and Alan Dershowitz, or asked questions via the chief justice by the senators. The senators submitted written questions to the chief justice. By the way, can I just say we should always do this? Like every congressional hearing should be this. There should be just one person who's delegated to ask the questions because otherwise you end up with this insane grandstanding. I will say the process yesterday was so much better just because you had senators who couldn't stand there and grandstand for five minutes before getting to a question mark. I do a lot of Q&As publicly. There's nothing more irritating than when someone takes the mic, tells you their life story, and never hits a question mark. I do a lot of Q&As publicly. There's nothing more irritating

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