White House correspondent Hans Nichols explained Tuesday that President Donald Trump's team is "prepared to escalate" if the Senate decides to call John Bolton to testify.
Over the past week, Bolton's manuscript revealed that the president was guilty of the crime he's accused of committing. Tuesday, former chief of staff Gen. John Kelly also agreed that Bolton was telling the truth.
"They don't really have a good sense of where the votes are right now," Nichols said about the White House. "At least the folks I'm talking to in the White House. They're looking at public pronouncement they're watching this [caucus] meeting that Jeff's standing outside of very closely because they're already concerned that some of the public statements have locked senators into a position that they can't unwind themselves from."
he said that the White House will likely know where the vote is once the Republicans exit the caucus room.
"Then they'll know, and their decision tree will take place, and they'll go down their next steps, and that gets into whether or not you go up the escalation ladder on calling witnesses," he said. "I know that normally we talked about the escalation latter being about foreign conflict, but the White House is prepared to escalate, and they have their allies in the Senate to call additional witnesses. Whether that's the whistleblower, whether that's Hunter Biden, whether that's Adam Schiff, they are prepared to go that route. Now, open question, if there are enough votes for that, but that would be their next move is Bolton is called up, or some sort of witness like Bolton is called to testify."
Watch his report below:
