President Donald Trump is aggressively courting Senate Republicans as impeachment bears down, and on Thursday, he’ll come face to face with two of the most unpredictable jurors in any Senate trial: Mitt Romney and Susan Collins.

By day’s end, the president will have hosted more than 40 Republican senators at the White House since autumn began, mostly for weekly lunches that address a series of issues but also usually include a side of impeachment. Another group will head to the White House on Thursday, leaving just a handful of Republican senators untended by the president…

The flurry of activity highlights the increasingly urgent task at hand for Trump: Making sure the GOP caucus understands his side of the Ukraine saga, not just through his tweets, but from him personally. If the 47 Democratic Caucus members stay united and vote to remove Trump from office, the president needs the support of as many of the 53 Senate Republicans as possible, both to avoid his removal from office and to keep the party from splintering ahead of his 2020 re-election bid.

“For him, this is deeply personal. And he wants an opportunity to be heard,” said Senate Majority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) in an interview. “He knows in the end that Republican senators are going to be sitting and listening to the arguments on this, and I think he just wants an opportunity to provide a defense.”