Lots of different polls lately have showed solid support among the public for calling witnesses in principle. Sometimes the numbers are in the upper 50, sometimes the upper 60s. This new one from YouGov is right in between,at 63/23.
But few of those polls then take the logical next step of asking which witnesses specifically should be called. John Bolton and Hunter Biden are the two most obvious candidates, but what about Mick Mulvaney? Mike Pompeo?
What about Grandpa Joe, damn it?
YouGov asked. Along with the five men I just mentioned, they also polled the public on calling Lev Parnas and Rudy Giuliani. Of the seven potential witnesses tested, only three had the distinction of plurality support for subpoenaing them among Republicans, Democrats, *and* independents. And two of them are would-be defense witnesses.
One is Hunter Biden:
And the second is Joe Biden:
Democratic support is narrow in both cases, as you can see, but here’s something for the White House to be optimistic about. Even the opposing party is willing to hear Trump out on possible corruption involving Burisma.
Well, either that or Democrats are so confident in the Bidens’ innocence that they’re happy to have them called to the stand. Nothing to hide! That seems … unlikely in Hunter’s case at least, though, given that nobody can explain what the hell he was doing on Burisma’s board in the first place.
I said there were three witnesses whom pluralities in every group wanted to call, didn’t I? Care to guess the third? No, it’s not Bolton. He’s at 33/39 among Republicans even though he’s obviously a highly material witness. Not Mulvaney either. He’s at 28/38.
C’mon, you know who it is:
It’s Rudy, of course. And for good reason: Apart from Trump himself, there’s no player in the Ukraine saga who has more relevant information than the president’s lawyer/crony/fixer, the man who not only took the lead on pressuring the Ukrainian government to investigate the Bidens but who admitted the whole plan to the New York Times on the record eight months ago. Of course Giuliani should be called.
I’m just not sure the country could survive it. Rudy’s so erratic, so prone to MAGA grandstanding, and so apparently tangled up in shady schemes abroad that after he was done we’d be left with a gordian knot of lies, half-truths, corrupt admissions, and outright hallucinations.
It’d be like putting the Joker on the stand. How do you begin to unpack that testimony in deliberations?
I wonder if Giuliani’s high name recognition is contributing to the strong support among various groups to subpoena him. It’d be hard to explain why Republicans are willing to call Rudy but not Mike Pompeo if this were a simple question of keeping potentially damaging witnesses out of the trial in the interest of protecting Trump. No one would be more dangerous to the president under oath than Giuliani, after all. I think some Republicans may be okay with calling him not just because he has an outsized role in this matter but because he’s had an outsized role as a Trump surrogate on TV for the past several years. They know who he is and they’re interested in hearing what he knows. Pompeo, Mulvaney, Bolton, Parnas — lots of people couldn’t pick them out of line-ups let alone explain what part they played in the Ukraine saga.
One last note about the data, though. Across the overall population, thanks to strong Democratic support, the public supports calling all seven witnesses above. In six of the seven cases, at least 50 percent are in favor. (For Lev Parnas the split was 47/29, probably because even many Dems still have no idea who he is.) Pluralities of independents favor calling all seven. That’s what the Senate GOP is up against in trying to get through this week without voting to call witnesses.
Here’s Ted Cruz today ducking a question about whether Bolton should testify.
Senator why shouldn’t Bolton testify? The answer: pic.twitter.com/RfWVvWbGnw
— Brian J. Karem (@BrianKarem) January 27, 2020
