Former National Security Adviser John Bolton is the man of the hour. His forthcoming book, as summarized by The New York Times and other media outlets, appears to undermine the "no quid pro quo" defense of President Trump. He may have pried loose the Republican votes necessary to hear from additional witnesses and keep the Senate trial going. We may even get testimony from Bolton himself.Bolton is now getting fulsome praise in quarters where he was previously dismissed as a mustachioed menace. The Resistance recognizes that he may give them their best shot to take Trump down. But is Bolton, a creature of the conservative movement who relies on the Republican Party for influence, really ready to go the route of John Dean, the fired White House counsel whose Senate testimony in 1973 led to President Richard Nixon's resignation?Under Trump, we have seen a split among neoconservatives and other inveterate Republican hawks. Some have become such Never Trump mainstays that they functionally align with the left in opposition to the president, cultivating new audiences for themselves. Former Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, attorney George Conway (husband of Kellyanne), and Washington Post columnists Jennifer Rubin and Max Boot fit in this category. Others, like Sens. Tom Cotton and Lindsey Graham, have tried to win Trump's favor.Bolton's role in the latter camp briefly won him a spot as national security adviser to the president. As his foreign-policy differences with Trump mounted, he was eventually cashiered. He no doubt feels burned by Trump and his erstwhile colleagues who outmaneuvered him in Washington's bureaucratic games. This would be an unparalleled opportunity for revenge and perhaps a chance to install, via Vice President Mike Pence, a president more to his liking on these issues.Except Bolton isn't exactly like the Kristols and the Boots. Taking down a Republican president could permanently damage his brand and influence with the people he needs to accomplish his policy objectives. Is Bolton prepared to do that?Much is made of the fact that Bolton is not, strictly speaking, a neoconservative. In foreign policy terms, this matters little: He may be more skeptical than they of democracy promotion and some of the more idealistic arguments employed on behalf of the Iraq invasion, but he generally supports all the same wars. His threshold for the use of military force is lower than that which prevailed under Ronald Reagan or George H.W. Bush.Yet in domestic politics, it may matter more. Bolton isn't a liberal mugged by reality. His conservatism dates back to Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign. He does not find rank-and-file Republicans uncouth. Trump voters are a natural audience for his speeches, television appearances, and books — at least until now.While the fear that Trump would be insufficiently hawkish is a quiet motivation of many Never Trumpers on the right, Kristol, Rubin, and Boot have to some extent de-emphasized their foreign policy views as they have pursued a new following among the MSNBC set. Rubin in particular has criticized Iran moves by Trump she almost certainly would have praised if done by another Republican.Bolton isn't going to be able to do that, at least not so easily. His preferred foreign policy matters to him and it is only going to come to fruition under Republican presidents. He has appeared at events like the National Conservatism Summit in order to steer the new nationalist, populist right in a more hawkish and interventionist direction. He does not want to cede the field to Tucker Carlson.How much does any of this matter? If Bolton testifies, what matters most is what he saw and whether that is helpful or harmful to the president. Even if they don't make Trump's removal more likely, his revelations could become a damaging campaign issue. They could also secure majority support for an article of impeachment even if the votes to convict fall well below the required two-thirds.But if Bolton isn't ready to jump from the Trump Train to the Resistance, if he continues to have policies he needs Republicans to champion and he remains more Fox News than MSNBC, it could color his much anticipated testimony at the margins. Maybe he won't go the full John Dean. Or maybe there will be surprises that partisans of both stripes can't predict.If John Bolton looks like an unlikely hero for the Democrats, that's for one very simple reason: He is.Want more essential commentary and analysis like this delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for The Week's "Today's best articles" newsletter here.More stories from theweek.com It's 2020 and women are exhausted Roberts reportedly blocked Rand Paul's questions mentioning alleged whistleblower's name Did John Bolton actually do Trump a favor?

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) - Senator Rick Scott of Florida injected himself into the 2020 presidential race, airing an ad in Iowa days ahead of a crucial caucus by attacking the Democratic-led impeachment trial against President Donald Trump and accusing former Vice President Joe Biden of corruption.

The ad buy by ...

Fresh off his latest stint arguing against impeachment on the floor of the Senate, Alan Dershowitz appeared on The View via satellite from Washington, D.C., on Wednesday morning and the interview was just as insane as you may have imagined. From the start, the hosts had an unusually hard time keeping Dershowitz on track as he filibustered about the framers’ intentions and his newfound theory that the president must commit a crime to be removed from office. Asked to name one other constitutional scholar who believes that, Dershowitz began talking about, “In 1867 the dean of the Columbia Law School…” “Wait, wait, wait,” moderator Whoopi Goldberg interrupted. “In 1492, Columbus sailed the seas of blue, but listen, I need us to move on.” When he refused to move on, she told him, “Here’s the thing, Alan, you’re not going to get any time because you’ve got four people trying to ask questions. So I’m asking you to move faster.” Trevor Noah Destroys Alan Dershowitz’s Impeachment HypocrisyHe continued to press his point, arguing that scholars are only taking that position because Donald Trump is being impeached. “If Hillary Clinton were being impeached, they'd all be on my side,” he said, to which Joy Behar yelled, “That’s just baloney!” “So I'm moving you on or I'm cutting you off, one or the other is going to happen,” Goldberg added to cheers from the audience “I don't want to make this contentious, but we only have several minutes.” When Dershowitz chortled in response, she said, “You're laughing. I've always been respectful to you and you've always been respectful to me. So I need to move us on.” With that, she played a clip of Dershowitz making the exact opposite argument about the necessity of a crime during the Clinton impeachment. All he could really do was make a joke about his appearance in 1998—“First of all, I want to admit one thing, I was dead wrong about my haircut”—and say that he’s “changed his mind” about a lot of things over the years. But as Sunny Hostin then pointed out, even if you did need a “crime” to convict Trump, the Government Accountability Office already determined that Trump’s decision to withhold aid to Ukraine was illegal. “They didn't say that, no, no, no,” Dershowitz said. “Sunny, I'll tell you what, let's bet $1,000 to be contributed to the peace of Israel and Palestine.” As she maintained her position, he contradicted the GAO by saying, “They have no jurisdiction to conclude it's a crime. Moreover, the GAO is dead wrong. The president conducts foreign policy. He has the right to withhold funds.” By the time Dershowitz started quoting Abraham Lincoln, Goldberg could be heard groaning, “Oh god!” And all of that was before Meghan McCain got her chance to ask a question. Newt Gingrich and Whoopi Goldberg Go at It Over Trump’s ‘Lynching’ CommentsRead more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

Club for Growth is running a new television ad hitting Sen. Mitt Romney for aligning with Democrats on process questions surrounding the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump.

The 30-second ad attacking the Utah Republican, titled "Handle," will air on Fox News in Salt Lake City, and Washington, D.C., Thursday ...

Lev Parnas is on Capitol Hill, and he has something to say.Parnas, a former associate of Rudy Giuliani, has provided telling pieces of evidence against President Trump in his Senate impeachment trial — not that most Republican senators have wanted to listen to him. So on Wednesday, Parnas showed up at the Capitol to convince the Senate to take witnesses in its ongoing trial, and then revealed what he'd say if he were called.PBS NewsHour's Yamiche Alcindor questioned Parnas while he was walking through the Capitol, asking "what's the most important thing you want to say to senators?" "Call the witnesses," he said. And if he was eventually called, Parnas said he would tell the Senate "the president knew everything that was going on in Ukraine, and he put pressure, and there were many quid pro quos," including some that happened before Trump's July 25 phone call.> Lev Parnas and his attorney Joseph Bondy have arrived on Capitol Hill. Parnas says he wants a chance to tells senators that President Trump knew about everything. pic.twitter.com/IwxeRczzue> > — Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) January 29, 2020Parnas took a bigger role in the impeachment trial when his texts revealed efforts by the Trump administration to oust former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, including a possible surveillance campaign. Trump has tried to say he doesn't even know Parnas, though Parnas' lawyer has maintained that's not true.More stories from theweek.com It's 2020 and women are exhausted The 3 kinds of Republicans that Bolton's testimony would reveal Bolton reportedly received a formal threat from White House to prevent book publication