As he flew back to Washington aboard Air Force One from a campaign rally in Milwaukee on January 14, Donald Trump flipped on CNN to catch some of the Democratic debate. Trump needed only a few moments watching the six candidates spar onstage in Des Moines to deliver his verdict. “This is boring!” he said, according to a Republican on the plane. “His voice was a little sore. But he was feeling really good.”

The respite would be brief. By the time Trump landed at Joint Base Andrews, the media was reporting on new impeachment evidence that Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas had handed over to the House Intelligence Committee. (The document trove included text messages between Parnas and Connecticut landscaper turned GOP congressional candidate Robert Hyde that suggested Hyde was surveilling—and possibly planning to harm—America’s Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovitch.) Last night Parnas sat for an explosive prime time interview with Rachel Maddow, during which he alleged, among many things, that Trump, Mike Pence, and William Barr were all involved in the plot to deny Ukraine nearly $400 million of military assistance unless Ukrainian prosecutors investigated the Bidens.

The Parnas interview made for riveting television. However, it’s too early to tell whether it will sway Republican senators to call witnesses during the trial. Publicly the White House and Trump allies are painting Parnas as an unreliable opportunist trying to improve his precarious legal situation. “These allegations are being made by a man who is currently out on bail for federal crimes and is desperate to reduce his exposure to prison,” press secretary Stephanie Grisham said in a statement after I reached out to the White House for comment. Jason Miller, the Trump transition’s former communications director, told me Republicans should welcome Parnas’s testimony during the trial. “Parnas is the czar of the grifters, and he hasn’t put forward any proof that points to wrongdoing by the president. I think Parnas would be a good witness for Republicans. We want to smash this to pieces.” In private, though, some Republicans have a darker view. “This is pretty bad,” a prominent Republican close to Mitch McConnell told me. “Rudy strikes again.”

For Trump, Parnas injects uncertainty into a political environment that, until this point, he’d seen as tipping his way. The prevailing mood in the West Wing has been positive lately, according to conversations with a half dozen Republicans close to the White House. In the days since ordering the strike on Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, Trump has regaled friends with details of the mission as if he were narrating a scene from a Michael Bay movie. “Trump said they were watching it live,” one person who spoke with him told me. “He described how the military officer was counting down and when he got to zero he said, ‘He’s been eliminated, Mr. President.’”

Trump’s optimism has also been buoyed by polling updates from 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale. According to sources, Parscale and Jared Kushner have told Trump the numbers look good. “The data is pointing in a good direction. There’s been an uptick in all the battleground states,” said a Republican who’s been briefed on the internal polls. According to the source, focus groups conducted by the campaign indicate that, while voters don’t like Trump personally, they’re satisfied with the economy. “In focus groups we hear things like, ‘I’m appalled by the tweets. I don’t like him, but, fuck, things are going really well. I like the policy. And no, the phone call wasn’t perfect, but it’s certainly not impeachable. My God, what are the Democrats willing to do to stop him?’ With Trump, everything is baked in.” The campaign has also, so far, avoided the vicious factionalism and infighting that cleaved the 2016 effort. “They have a professional campaign and it’s tied to the RNC,” said 2016 campaign staffer Sam Nunberg, who was fired over racist Facebook posts after clashing with Corey Lewandowski. (Nunberg later apologized for the posts.)