Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced on Tuesday that he has the votes of at least 51 Republicans to pass a resolution setting the rules for the Senate’s impeachment trial. Those rules do not include the preconditions House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been demanding ever since the House’s partisan vote to impeach President Donald Trump. McConnell pointedly noted that the Senate will adopt the same rules that were unanimously approved 20 years ago when Bill Clinton was impeached. He explained that any decision to call witnesses would be made only after the trial proceedings were underway, and only if deemed necessary by lawmakers, as was done during Clinton’s impeachment trial.

Pelosi and her partner in crime, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, claim that McConnell and Senate Republicans are playing unfair, which is a laughably hypocritical charge given the Democrats’ underhanded and obviously partisan conduct during House impeachment hearings. Furthermore, Pelosi rushed through the House’s sham impeachment proceedings in order to secure a vote against Trump, vacuously claiming that the issue was so pressing that it could not wait … only to stall sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate while building the false narrative that it is Senate Republicans and not House Democrats who aren’t playing fair.

McConnell has firmly stood his ground in refusing to give in to Pelosi and Schumer’s phony preconditions. They want an agreement to call four new witnesses — witnesses House Democrats could have subpoenaed if Pelosi had only slowed down her rush to impeach. This new demand is obviously part of Pelosi and company’s plan to flip the negative narrative that had grown around Democrats. Once her bluff was called, Pelosi announced that she will send the impeachment articles to the Senate once she’s seen the “details” of McConnell’s plan. It will be telling if she does indeed follow through, or if she once again cries foul.

Democrats know the Senate won’t vote to remove Trump, but that’s not their goal. Their aim is to paint the Senate impeachment trial as unfairly partisan so they can then use this false narrative to attack vulnerable Republican senators up for reelection in 2020. Democrats have always viewed this whole impeachment charade, at least in part, as a bid to gain control of the Senate.