Welcome back! I hope had everyone had a relaxing weekend, free from existential dread caused by the impending fall of the American democracy at the hands of Grand Old Party members who love President Trump's ass.

This week is huge (you-ugee) for the Impeachment Inquiry of Donald Trump as we have heard and will be hearing from many characters who were the July 25th "perfect" call between Presidents Trump and Zelensky, as well as those with a direct connection to President Trump (namely Gordon Sondland). Today, we'll break down the top Republicans involved in the inquiry as well as what their stance on this whole shindig is. I'll also make sure to look at who Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman, Jennifer Williams, and Kurt Volker all are and why their testimonies today are significant. Let's break it down.

I feel like I should already know this but... what's the GOP and how are they involved in all of this?

The GOP is just another name for the Republican Party, and the acronym stands for the Grand Old Party. It's essentially the "Ok Boomer" of all "Ok Boomer"'s, as the Republicans gave the name to themselves and they think it's a flex but it's really just sad.

As for the Republicans and their role in the impeachment inquiry, it's not great. House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff mentioned in yesterday's episode of Pod Save America that he's had Republican colleagues tell him they think he's doing a good job or that they believed that Trump was wrong which is so funny because you would never be able to tell that's how they feel given how they have been speaking during the hearings!!

In order to understand why Republican representatives are acting as they are, I really need to remind everyone that impeachment is inherently partisan. By nature, it is set to get ugly. In this specific impeachment inquiry, we have the minority party (the Democrats) holding a majority in the House, and the majority party (the Republicans, as the President in office is a Republican) holds a majority of the Senate. The House has the power to start an impeachment inquiry; the Senate has the power to reject it.

Republicans are acting much like Hillary Clinton in the 1990s: they're standing by their man. Sure; it's a tumultuous marriage, riddled with affairs, international correspondences, and (like any red hot relationship) Rudy Giuliani. They are doing this for a variety of reasons: the first is that some of them are up for re-election next year. To against Trump now is to face the wrath of MAGA nation then and like anyone, anywhere, regardless of if they like their job, these congressmen and women will do anything to keep them. Many Republicans also don't want to face the wrath of Trump himself. We can think back to Justin Amash who earlier this year spoke out against Trump and faced so much clapback that he literally defected from the Republican Party.

As we can glean from Schiff's Pod Save comments, there are reasons to believe that many Republicans are privately not happy with how this is all turning out, but that hasn't stopped them from leaning into partisanship as if it were a wall when you get the spins at a party.

Now that I know what the GOP is and how partisan they've become under the Trump administration, what's their impeachment defense?

Like every early-edge Millennial set on their Facebook profile in the early 2010s as they listened to "Take a Bow" by Rihanna: it's complicated.

The GOP response to this whole thing has been a multi-step process, not unlike the assembling of an Ikea table. Initially, they agreed with the White House's statement and said the July 25th Quid Pro Call was perfect. The defense at the time was that no innocent man would release the transcript of a call that implicated him of a crime, least of all the President of the United States. According to Lt. Colonel Vindman's closed-door testimony, he recalled that Burisma (the company Hunter Biden sat on the board of) and the Bidens had been mentioned but were not referenced in the transcript, calling its legitimacy into question although Vindman argued that this was not necessarily nefarious.

The defense right now, as repeatedly mentioned by Ranking Member Devin Nunes in his opening, closing, and whenever-he-gets-a-chance speeches is that there is not enough evidence brought forth by the witnesses to warrant impeachment, much less an impeachment inquiry. This seems silly and very thin, and you can see as such on Nunes's face now when he repeats his tried and true lines. The point of an impeachment inquiry is to seek and gather evidence to see if a.) a crime has been committed and b.) if that crime is significant enough to impeach a president. Saying there's not enough evidence in the middle of evidence gathering to decide a case at the end of the evidence-gathering process doesn't mean that the evidence gathering should stop. That would be as silly as Nunes calling hearing procedures "magical minutes." But make sure not to laugh at Nunes: that's how the Joker started.

Where are all these witnesses coming from????

According to Nunes, they are unfortunate and unwilling participants in a community theatre production (last week) and/or a circus (this week). Seven witnesses have testified publically so far this week: on Tuesday morning, we heard from Jennifer Williams, a foreign service official and aide to Mike Pence who was on the July 25th phone call, and Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman, a veteran who serves as the Ukraine expert on the National Security Council and was also on the call.

You might have been hearing a lot more about Colonel Vindman than Ms. Williams and that's because he's an easier target for Republicans like Nunes who are playing a little too heavily into the partisan thing. Rep. Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill) brought this up in his questioning of Vindman, referencing how Fox and Friends commentator Bryan Kilmeade alluded that because Vindman was an immigrant, his loyalties lay with his home country, not America. Laura Ingraham, who answers the question, What if the woman asking for the manager got a better hairstylist and was also an outspoken racist and xenophobe?, had George Yoo on her show back in October and the two went so far as to say he was currently working for the Ukrainian government. It's like when your racist aunt finishes her second glass of white wine at Thanksgiving and all hope for a lovely night is lost.

Tuesday afternoon, we heard from Kurt Volker, the former special envoy to Ukraine. He, like Sondland, revised his testimony and is apparently slated to appear in a reboot of the classic comedy The Three Amigos. One look at this squad of Volker, Sondland, and Rick Perry and you'll be saying, "Eat your heart out, Taylor Swift!!!" Alongside Volker was Tim Morrison, who I personally thought was very attractive until I found his Wikipedia page which described him as a "Bolton loyalist." That simmered me down real quick.

Tonight, we heard from Laura Cooper, a deputy assistant secretary at the Defense Department whose testimony was so clearly lacking pizzazz that the Intelligence Committee not only put her on the night shift but on the night of the November Democratic Debates shift. Alongside her is David Hale, an undersecretary at the State Department that the Republicans called when Secretary Pompeo threatened to go to court to fight his subpoena. (These were both mean and I apologize for that, solely because we need to protect the non-partisan civil servants who serve our country regardless of party or president. But remember: this is comedy. I'm not the President of the United States saying this.)

Fiona Hill and David Holmes are both set to testify tomorrow morning.

Ok, but who's Gordon Sondland and why is his testimony so hyped up?

Gordon Sondland is a hotel mogul who donated $1 million to Trump's inauguration (which was the biggest inauguration ever) and was rewarded with an ambassador position. As Ambassador to the European Union, Sondland became involved with Ukraine because Ukraine is seeking to become a member of the EU and seek member protection from Russia (remember: Russia annexed Crimea, a part of Ukraine, in 2014. Russia and Putin, in particular, see Ukraine as part of Russia, a vestige opinion from the USSR years). Sondland bit off more than he could chew, of course, as he continues to defend that he does not believe what he did (corresponding with President Trump to facilitate Ukraine's end of the quid pro quo bargain) was wrong.

However, Sondland notably revised his testimony after Bill Taylor released his, stating that Taylor's testimony reminded him of things he forgot. Leading up to today, it was unclear what kind of witness Sondland was going to be because, while he is a Trump loyalist, in the words of former Obama joke writer: "Sondland wanted to host fancy dinners in geneva and get wedding invites addressed to ambassador- he's not going down for these people."

I'll break down both the highlights of Sondland's testimony and tonight's Democratic debate later though because I've definitely overstayed my welcome in your attention spans.

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