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Our commander-in-chief is unhappy:

President Trump said he has encouraged his Republican allies to defend him on the substance of the impeachment probe, instead of focusing on criticizing the process, ahead of another week of scheduled testimony from administration officials.

Doesn’t Trump realize that the reason his allies are whining about process is because they have no defense to offer on substance? Maybe not. Maybe Trump is so delusional he actually believes that there’s some substantive defense of extorting a foreign country to smear a political rival.

Luckily for him, the rest of the Republican Party is smarter. They’ll stick to carping about the unfairness of the hearings and, in a pinch, claiming that Trump’s extortion of Ukraine is just a minor slap-on-the-wrist kind of thing, certainly nowhere near an impeachable offense.

How long will this work? If the modern Republican Party is as shameless as I think it is, forever. We’ll see.