Who’s really in charge? It’s Mitch

I guess we can get back to impeachment.

Donald Trump announced the Iran crisis was over Wednesday, adding that Americans “should be extremely grateful and happy.”

It’s not entirely clear who he wants us to be grateful to. God? Fate? The ayatollah?

Let’s take a wild guess that the answer is living in the White House.

It was a very short talk — less than 10 minutes — but the president still managed to give himself multiple pats on the back.

And, naturally, blame everything bad on Barack Obama. Trump threw in one whopping inaccuracy. He is going to spend the rest of his life claiming the Obama administration paid Iran billions of dollars to get the nuclear peace accord. Utterly false, but you will never talk Trump out of it, anymore than you’ll convince him that windmills don’t cause cancer or that he didn’t really win the popular vote.

Dark, suspicious minds wondered if the president had started the whole Iran crisis to get Americans to stop thinking about the impeachment story. Certainly possible. This is a guy who knows how to distract. He golfs, he tweets, he creates crises.

If Trump thought there were any chance of actually getting kicked out of office, God knows what he’d do. Invade another country? Arrest Nancy Pelosi? Pretend to adopt a pet?

Fortunately for him — if not for us — Mitch McConnell is running everything. The House impeachment vote is, of course, a done deal. The bill is going to reach the Senate sometime soon, and the majority leader has been dropping tiny hints that he’s leaning toward giving Trump a pass. (“I’m going to take my cues from the president’s lawyers.”)

During their deliberations, the senators apparently won’t be hearing from John Bolton, who’s now jumping up and down and waving his hand in an effort to volunteer to serve as a witness. Bolton would be the ideal person to ask about Trump’s plan to trade military aid to Ukraine for political dirt on Joe Biden. Granted, he’s a little late out of the gate. Probably been busy searching his conscience. Can’t possibly have anything to do with having a book coming out.

McConnell has expressed zero enthusiasm for the idea of letting Bolton come.

Some of the Republicans might think wistfully that Mike Pence would be a big improvement over the guy we’ve got now. For the country, maybe, but not for Mitch McConnell. For the past three years, the senator from Kentucky has basically been running the government. Somebody has to do it, and the administration’s people are barely capable of opening their office doors.

Trump’s two big victories as president have been the tax cut — organized and pushed through to law by Mitch McConnell — and a raft of new conservative federal judges.

In the real world Obama was nominating judges like crazy. McConnell refused to even give them a hearing.

Thanks to his pal and protector Mitch, Trump has it both ways on issues like gun control and prescription drug prices. He can say he’s in favor of change without taking any risk that anything will be presented for his signature into law. Mitch has it all covered — with a lid.

This is incredible power for a politician who’s never been elected to national office and isn’t even popular in his home state — one recent poll put him at the very bottom of the Senate, with a 37% positive voter rating in Kentucky.

Nevertheless, the country’s been Mitchified.