One of Barack Obama’s top advisers as president says voters have a ‘chilling’ lack of interest in the impeachment case, which he blames on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s ‘cynical calculation’.

David Axelrod, Mr Obama’s former chief strategist, met with a focus group of Democratic voters in Chicago on Friday in which he says impeachment “didn’t come up” until more than an hour into the discussion.

When it did, the voters said they were “ready to move on” because the outcome of the Senate trial - in which Mr Trump’s team began his defence on Saturday - was a foregone conclusion.

Speaking to CNN he said: “I was in a focus group this morning for the Institute for Politics here at the University of Chicago with some Chicago Democratic voters, and it was chilling to hear them talk about this.

“Because impeachment didn’t come up, no one volunteered it, for 80 minutes into the focus group, and we’re right in the middle of the trial.

All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment Show all 6 1 /6 All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment Alan Dershowitz Dershowitz is a controversial American lawyer best known for the high-profile clients he has successfully defended. Those clients have included OJ Simpson, Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein. One longtime Harvard Law associated told the New Yorker Dershowitz "revels in taking positions that ultimately are not just controversial but pretty close to indefensible." Getty All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment Ken Starr Starr became a household name in the 1990s as the independent counsel who led the investigation that led to Bill Clinton's impeachment. That investigation began as a look into a real estate scandal known as Whitewater, and eventually led to impeachment after Mr Clinton lied under oath about having an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. AP All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment Jay Sekulow Sekulow is the president's longtime personal attorney, and, now, personal lawyer in the White House. He has been accused by former Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas of being "in the loop" during the Ukraine scandal. Getty All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment Pam Bondi Bondi is the former attorney general in Florida, and a longtime backer of the president's. She made a name for herself in Florida for taking hyper partisan stances on issues, and her penchant for publicity. She is likely to be a prominent public-facing figure during the trial. AFP/Getty All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment Pat Cipollone Cipollone is the White House counsel, and leading the president's defence team. Getty All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment Rudy Giuliani While not officially named as one of the president's impeachment lawyers, it is hard to ignore Giuliani's outsized role in this process. The former mayor of New York has been making headlines for months as he defends his client, and for his apparent role in the effort to compel Ukraine to launch the investigation into Joe Biden. We'll see how he figures in the actual trial, which he has said he would like to be a part of. Reuters

"When it came up, they said, you know, it's terrible what he did, the case has been proven, but we know how it's going to turn out, so we're not really that interested, we're ready to move on."

Mr Axelrod said Mr McConnell and the president were banking on that strategy working, describing it as: “They can take the hit here, buffalo their way through this and the public will move on. It’s a cynical calculation, but it may not be the wrong calculation."

Some 20 Republicans would need to vote with all Democrats to convict the president and remove him from office, a highly unlikely outcome.

Political analyst David Axelrod helped Barack Obama win in 2008 (Getty)

House impeachment managers wrapped up their third day of opening arguments in the impeachment trial on Friday, which has drawn millions of viewers.