In a decade-plus covering Congress, I have never encountered a politician who could ignore a sea of Capitol Hill correspondents with the ease of Mitch McConnell. Human reflex is to look up when your name is called—to feel compelled to at least listen to, if not answer, a direct question. Most lawmakers do, even if all they offer is “no comment.” Not McConnell. His single-mindedness is legendary. And aside from an intense interest in Washington Nationals baseball and University of Louisville football, the Senate majority leader is focused on two overriding objectives: preserving his party’s control of the Senate, and maintaining his own control of that majority.

This explains every move McConnell makes as he navigates the impeachment of Donald Trump and the presumptive Senate trial to adjudicate charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress that Democrats in the House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved seven days before Christmas. “He’s not rattled by the noise,” a veteran McConnell adviser told me. “And, this is the ultimate noise exercise in politics.”

Democrats frustrated with McConnell’s plan for a swift January acquittal are hopeful that Nancy Pelosi’s decision to sit on the articles will disrupt the majority leader’s strategy. They shouldn’t be. When the House Speaker’s threat to delay transmitting the articles of impeachment to the Senate first surfaced, McConnell told me with barely disguised amusement that he was in “no hurry” for a trial. With Congress poised to return to Washington after a two-week holiday break, nothing has changed, a senior Republican Senate aide said flatly—even amid fresh revelations that could bolster the Democrats’ case. McConnell’s immediate concerns as the election year dawns are Republican unity and avoiding conflict with Trump. No trial is the easiest way to achieve both.

Pelosi is a sharp operator who surely realizes what little leverage she has over McConnell and how unlikely it is, to say the least, that 51 votes will materialize to approve Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s list of witnesses, among them former national security adviser John Bolton and Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney. Her actions, then, are likely an attempt to agitate the president.

Trump is eager to fight back. He and his acolytes initially sought testimony from witnesses on the Senate floor without which, they insisted, an adequate defense would be impossible to mount. But McConnell painstakingly explained the perils of this approach to Trump, emphasizing how unrealistic it was to expect 51 of 53 Republicans to agree to Trump’s dream witness list of Hunter Biden, the government whistle-blower whose complaint alleged that Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate Hunter and Joe Biden, and others. McConnell’s strategy worked.

Pelosi’s play has to be that the president, seeing the exoneration he’s convinced a Senate trial would deliver slipping away the longer she withholds the articles, will pressure McConnell to drop his opposition to witnesses, fracturing the unity of Senate Republicans such that some would go so far as to side with Schumer. That appears a remote possibility. But to the extent the mercurial Trump loses patience, Senate GOP insiders are confident that McConnell can keep him in the fold. The majority leader, the senior Republican Senate aide said, “was able to walk Trump back from the ledge the first time. There’s no reason he can’t do it again.”

McConnell, in his sixth term, has lasted a remarkable 13 years as the top Senate Republican in part because he spends most of his time listening. Most senators don’t appreciate marching orders. So, McConnell asks questions and lets his members talk, whether in private sessions in his suite of offices, or during three private luncheons Senate Republicans gather for weekly in an expansive meeting room just across the hall.