Joel Pollak on the Senate Hearing

I want to just say to you that if you've watched it all, I've always respected you, but now I— you're on a higher plane than ever. I, I don't know how you do it. Do you drink coffee during that time? Do you take a tranquilizer? Are you on Valium? What do you do the whole time?

I do drink a lot of coffee. I will say that at about 9 PM last night, it really got to me, and I thought to myself, how am I going to keep enduring this? And then I said to myself, you know what, I actually like this, I can take the punishment. It's all right. But spare a thought for the Chief Justice, John Roberts. He had to sit up there the entire time, and this morning he's at the Supreme Court hearing oral arguments before he goes back to the Senate. So he is actually doing two jobs around the clock.

Oh, there is a break to eat, correct?

I think there's a break for many other material and bodily necessities, but it's not clear when they break. They really didn't break very much at all yesterday. Today's schedule will probably be a little less punishing because the two sides have been given a limit of 24 hours each to present their opening arguments. So any extra time that the Democrats, the House managers, take today, for example, will come out of future days. So I think they're going to pace themselves a little more carefully. They—

their argument is we have evidence and we have witnesses we want to call, and the Republicans are stopping that. But I, you know, the whole truth and nothing but the truth— I'd want to understand, isn't that what the Democrats did in the House?

It's exactly what Democrats did in the House, and they impeached the president anyway. When you impeach the president, as Jerry Nadler said, That's a statement of their belief that there's proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Well, if you've proved your case beyond a reasonable doubt, you don't need more witnesses. You know, I liken it in a way to a baseball game in the 9th inning. If you have enough of a lead and you're the home team, you don't have to bat in the bottom of the 9th. You don't need to score more runs. If they think they've won the game, they should just present the case and have the Senate vote on it. But as the president's lawyers said yesterday, the fact that Democrats keep insisting on more witnesses— and they don't know what these witnesses are going to say, by the way, but they keep insisting on more witnesses— tells you they don't actually think they've won. They haven't proved their case, and it looks very weak.

I read— tell me if this is true— that they were— they're so yearning to have John Bolton testify that they were willing to make a trade, truly, to use your sports analogy. You give us John Bolton and we will give you Hunter Biden. Is that true?

That was reported that some Senate Democrats were considering that. That has to be the most desperate trade of all time because Hunter Biden, first of all, he's scheduled to appear in a different court next week. He's being sued in a paternity claim, and the judge has ordered him to appear. So I don't know how he's going to fit all of these witness appearances into his very busy trial schedule. But anyway, Hunter Biden would be called by Republicans to show that there was a legitimate public interest in President Trump asking the president of Ukraine to investigate all this. Democrats have made one pillar of their argument that there was no possible public interest in asking Ukraine about the Biden They've said that no possible— not just a minor public interest, they said there was no public interest at all. So once you bring Hunter Biden in and he has to explain why he was getting paid more than board members of Fortune 500 companies to sit on this Ukrainian gas company board when he had no experience, that's going to start to look very bad, especially with all the other details coming out in Peter Schweizer's book this week about other Biden family members who enriched themselves while Biden was vice president. It's a very bad witness for Democrats, but they're willing to trade in the hope of getting John Bolton. Now, John Bolton's had some personal and professional and policy differences with his former boss, with President Trump, but the idea that Democrats are placing all of their bets on the supposedly warmongering, neoconservative, mustachioed villain John Bolton, that he's somehow going to save them, it just strikes me as bizarre. It's a desperate gamble. And by the way, the thing The thing they want Bolton to testify about is a comment that he's alleged to have made by Dr. Fiona Hill and a bunch of other witnesses. They said that he described Ambassador Sondland as working on what he called a drug deal, and she said that it was meant in jest. It was a sarcastic comment. He was disparaging Sondland and some of the other staffers. Well, the Democrats want to know what was the drug deal, what was the arrangement going on. They want him to explain a joke, so their key witness is going to come on, twirl his his villainous mustache and explain why they don't have a sense of humor. I mean, it's got to be the most desperate trade proposed in history.

What would the Republicans ask Hunter Biden?

They would ask him how he came to be on this board. They would also ask him about the investment company he formed with the son-in-law of John Kerry and how he came to acquire something like $1.5 billion of funds that were controlled by the Chinese government that were somehow placed at disposal for investment. How did he sell his company with no business experience and having just been kicked out of the Navy? How did he sell himself to foreign governments and large foreign companies? Did he talk about his father being vice president and how that would gain them access to the Obama administration? Because that's the only reasonable answer to that question. And also, his business partner was John Kerry's son-in-law, the Secretary of State. So clearly he was selling political access. I think they're going to ask him whether this was a bribe or not. Was this his MO? Was this his business model? Because then it becomes immediately clear that not only did Donald Trump have a duty to investigate the corruption side of it, but he also had a duty to know if it was affecting the Obama administration's policies on the Ukraine, on China, on other issues.

All right, we'll be back in a moment. 1-800-PRAGER-776.