Congress is set for a spectacle Wednesday — one that could be either high drama or a circus — as President Trump Donald John TrumpOmar fires back at Trump over rally remarks: 'This is my country' Pelosi: Trump hurrying to fill SCOTUS seat so he can repeal ObamaCare Trump mocks Biden appearance, mask use ahead of first debate MORE’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen testifies in public.

The stakes are high for Cohen’s appearance before the House Oversight and Reform Committee.

According to a New York Times report on Tuesday, he will accuse Trump of potentially criminal conduct as well as the use of racist language.

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His testimony could embarrass the president in the middle of Trump’s Hanoi summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un — and might provoke a volcanic response.

But if Cohen’s testimony will inevitably garner plenty of headlines and airtime, will it have any substantive political impact?

Trump is a famously polarizing figure and his approval ratings have shifted around within a relatively narrow range throughout his tenure.

Cohen looks like an unlikely figure to change that — unless he has hard evidence to substantiate his charges.

Cohen is testifying shortly before he is due to start a three-year jail term. One of the offenses to which he pled guilty is lying to Congress.

Before he turned on Trump, Cohen was a famously aggressive defender of the president: He is reported to have said he would “take a bullet” for Trump, and he also engaged in threatening behavior toward reporters.

The president’s allies are engaged in a full-court press to demolish any vestige of credibility on Cohen’s part.

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“The first thing that Democrats organize after they take over control of the House of Representatives is to bring forward a known liar and perjurer, who has been convicted of lying to the very committees that he is going to be testifying to,” said David Bossie, a close Trump ally who was the president’s deputy campaign manager in 2016.

Bossie also accused the opposition party of being “irresponsible” for organizing the hearings while Trump is in Hanoi.

“They hate the president more than they love the country, and they want to do anything they can to hurt him — anything to have a show with Michael Cohen as the starring act.”

Trump himself has in the past seemed to insinuate that Cohen’s father-in-law has some undiscovered skeletons in his closet. The president has provided no evidence to back up that suggestion.

Other supporters have gone even further.

On Tuesday afternoon, Rep. Matt Gaetz Matthew (Matt) GaetzLara Trump campaigns with far-right activist candidate Laura Loomer in Florida House to vote on removing cannabis from list of controlled substances The Hill's 12:30 Report: Sights and sounds from GOP convention night 1 MORE (R-Fla.), one of the president’s most fervent backers on Capitol Hill, set off his own firestorm with a tweet that accused Cohen of infidelity.

Including Cohen’s own Twitter handle in his statement, Gaetz wrote: “Do your wife & father-in-law know about your girlfriends? Maybe tonight would be a good time for that chat. I wonder if she’ll remain faithful when you’re in prison. She’s about to learn a lot…”

The tweet drew immediate condemnation from Democrats and other outside observers, with some suggesting that Gaetz was at risk of transgressing laws barring witness intimidation.

Laurence Tribe, a Harvard Law School professor, tweeted that Gaetz was “engaged in criminal witness tampering in plain sight” and “deserves to be indicted.”

A Vox reporter tweeted what he said was a text exchange with Gaetz in which the congressman denied witness tampering, saying instead: "I’m witness testing. We still are allowed to test the veracity and character of witnesses, I think.”