WASHINGTON—Mike Braun, Republican of Indiana, heretofore has been the very model of a modern nondescript senator. He’s in his first term. He has left no footprints on any major issue. No important legislation has his fingerprints on it. His seat is considered to be a safe one. And he is from Indiana, which is the home of our current vice president, and which was very happy to be rid of him as governor. Somehow, though, over the two weeks of the impeachment trial here in the Senate, Braun has emerged as one of the most prominent defenders the president* has among his jurors. He has been omnipresent in media gaggles and on television. He is not as obviously thirsty as Josh Hawley. He is not as sought-after in the hallways as Lindsey Graham. But he is always around and always willing to rise to the president*’s defense.

In no particular order, Braun has distinguished himself by expressing his hope that the president* will look upon this whole matter as a kind of learning experience, by speculating that the Lev Parnas tapes were a put-up job, and that in the face of the fact that, like every other Republican politician since William Seward, Braun had his picture taken with that famous Volga Bagman. He also is very big on the theory that this impeachment is a way to reverse the 2016 presidential election and rig the next one, and this despite the fact that the former would leave in charge his fellow Hoosier, Mike Pence, and why exactly Republican senators would seem to rather immolate their own careers than help make Pence president is something we really should study when this all calms down.

Over the weekend, as we all know by now, The New York Times got a hold of the manuscript for John Bolton’s upcoming memoir—currently under the working title, I’m Crazy But These Guys Are All Bughouse Insane—in which Bolton apparently relates interactions with the president* in which the president* pretty much does everything he’s been accused of in the Articles of Impeachment.

President Trump told his national security adviser in August that he wanted to continue freezing $391 million in security assistance to Ukraine until officials there helped with investigations into Democrats including the Bidens, according to an unpublished manuscript by the former adviser, John R. Bolton.

If the Times account of Bolton’s book is accurate, the book leaves the president*’s defense a pile of smoking meat by the side of the road. Bolton ropes in Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, puts Attorney General William Barr in the middle of a cover-up regarding the activities of Rudy Giuliani, and shreds any credibility White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney had in the whole affair. Naturally, then, prior to Monday’s resumption of the presentation of the president*’s case, this required the presence of the fire brigade.

In the end, Mike Braun and John Barasso were the only Republican senators who showed up. Alex Wong Getty Images

Originally, that was supposed to be Braun, John Barrasso, Lindsey Graham, Mike Lee, and James Lankford. Conspicuously, the latter three bailed, leaving Barrasso and the now inevitable Mike Braun to try and talk everyone down from the reality that John Bolton had given away the whole game. While admitting that the calculations of individual senators may have “changed” since the Times story dropped, Braun insisted that the basic facts he had been dealing out for two weeks had not. Moreover, Braun spectacularly argued that, whatever the president* may have done, he did so in his role as disrupter-in-chief. He also managed to drag Bernie Sanders into it.

I think that's where it comes down to each senator having to make that decision. You will have to weigh your conscience and what the people back home want you to do. And even when we get there I think it's going to vindicate the president because in many states as much as the president infuriates half the country, he inspires the other half. And we are still dealing with this, even what's happening in the Democratic race, Bernie Sanders, I came here because I was that up with business as usual here. And President Trump and Bernie Sanders are manifestations of that. I heard Bernie a little bit ago, I am speaking against the establishment. Talking to his voters and it will all be played out in the long run and we are going to get through this and the president is going to be vindicated because he came here to shake up the system, the agenda is working and will go on and not overturn one election and prevent another.

And then they were off to hear the president*’s counsel, Jay Sekulow, tell the Senate that he and the defense team “do not deal in speculations and allegations,” as though what the Times reported hadn’t happened, and as though everything we all know is coming will never happen, as well.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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