GOP Senate will now act as Trump's personal counsel

In [the Fox News hermetically sealed] universe, it’s simultaneously the case that everything Trump said on his corrupt call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was absolutely fine and that the key elements of Trump’s pressure on Zelensky simply never happened.

And in this universe, it’s not just fully understood that Trump’s acquittal is assured in advance and that the trial will be gamed to Trump’s maximum benefit. It’s also understood that this is how it should be. Indeed, [McConnell's recent Sean Hannity] interview appears designed to reassure audiences of all this.

That was plainly evident in McConnell’s quotes about how this process will unfold. As McConnell said:

Everything I do during this, I’m coordinating with the White House counsel. There will be no difference between the president’s position and our position as to how to handle this.

McConnell also said:

We’ll be working through this process ... in total coordination with the White House counsel’s office and the people representing the president in the well of the Senate.

  WaPo

He won't have to spend so much on personal attorneys this way.

Many have sharply criticized McConnell for telegraphing that the trial will be gamed in advance to assure Trump’s acquittal and to make it as politically painless as possible. That’s true, but it’s worse than this. Note that Hannity treated this not just as utterly unremarkable, but as how things ought to be.

[...]

As Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz write, the framers designated the Senate for impeachment trials to create an “extraordinary court” composed of “the nation’s leading statesmen,” one up to the gravity of weighing “great offenses against the people.” The Senate would not be prone to factional pressure (senators have six-year terms) and would be independent of the president.

The GOP is in the process of ripping up the Constitution, by merely ignoring it.

But you cannot watch this McConnell interview without coming away convinced that he is trying to reassure the faction known as Trump and GOP voters that the Senate trial will be conducted in full accordance with Trump’s wishes and needs.

“I’m going to take my cues from the president’s lawyers,” McConnell said. “I’m going to coordinate with the president’s lawyers.” And: “There’s no chance the president will be removed from office.”

Kentucky, you're work is cut out for you. Ditch Mitch in 2020.

Hannity also dramatically misrepresented the evidence against Trump. Hannity said of Ambassador Gordon Sondland:

The one fact witness said, ‘The president said he wants nothing, no quid pro quo,’ That was the only fact witness that I saw.

This is a monumental absurdity. Sondland testified that there was a “quid pro quo” in which a White House meeting was conditioned on Ukraine announcing a Biden investigation, as Trump wanted.

What’s more, Sondland also admitted that he actually did directly inform a top aide to Zelensky that the military aid was conditioned on that investigation.

[...]

In Hannity-land, the power of Trump’s declared self-exoneration, as a reality-defining force, is absolute. It walls out all contrary facts, rendering them nonexistent.

Hannity also said there was zero “evidence of any wrongdoing whatsoever” on Trump’s part.

[...]

The important point here, however, is that this nonsense is necessary to reverse-justify McConnell’s naked corruption of the process. In the disinformation bubble that is Hannity’s show, millions of Trump and GOP voters are now reassured that McConnell will shape the trial entirely in sync with Trump’s political needs, and that Democrats have rendered it the correct and justified thing to do.

This interview belongs in a time capsule. It will benefit future generations who study the impeachment and all-but-certain acquittal of Trump, and the degree to which Trump’s defenders corrupted our discourse and political system to make that outcome possible.