The real reason Donald Trump just conceded defeat in his impeachment trial

| 6:19 pm EST January 13, 2020
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When it comes to the question of whether certain Republican Senators are going to force there to be witnesses at Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, it was always going to come down to what those Republican Senators each selfishly think is best for their own personal chances of reelection. That in turn was going to come down to impeachment poll numbers, and we’ve been waiting to see which way the wind might blow on that front.

In a surprise development tonight, Donald Trump and his White House are now telling CBS News that based on their headcount, the Republican Senate will indeed force witnesses to be called. This is remarkable on two fronts. First, the Trump regime doesn’t tend to acknowledge reality in general. Second, by publicly admitting this, Trump and his goons are further increasing the odds that it’ll happen.

Trump and his White House are essentially handing a green light for those GOP Senators to vote in favor of witnesses, as opposed to privately trying to change their minds. So what’s going on? One possibility is that Trump and his people are simply too stupid to understand that they’re working against their own interests by leaking this. Another possibility is that Trump and his handlers have concluded that witnesses are just about 100% going to happen no matter what they say or do, and they’re trying to get out ahead of it by being the ones to leak it, so they can start pushing the narrative that they can still “win” the trial even witnesses.

There’s also the possibility that Donald Trump and his White House are putting this out there to try to fool Nancy Pelosi into handing over the articles of impeachment. But Trump and his people aren’t exactly playing chess when it comes to impeachment. We suspect they’re conceding defeat on this front because they know it’s just not going the way they want it to. No wonder Trump has recently been publicly demanding a dismissal instead of a trial; it’s becoming clear that a trial isn’t going to play out in some magical way for him.