Well, no, of course he hasn't. He's a potential juror in a Senate trial. You aren't likely to see very many Republican senators give much of a full-throated defense of Trump at this point. They don't want to open themselves up to being accused of participating in a coverup. It's why that resolution on releasing the transcript to congress went unopposed.
That's one of the more ridiculous things I've read on this topic. One can also speculate that if Trump were found guilty and removed from office that President Pence would not pardon him, or that Trump wouldn't be found guilty and would not only win the popular vote in 2020 but would also win all 50 states in the Electoral College. One can also speculate that Mitch McConnell is strangely obessed with Jerry Nadler's buttcrack sweat and has copious amounts of it stored in jars and meticulously cataloged. All of these speculations have the same likelihood of coming true.
Considering the fact that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court would be the presiding judge over a Senate trial, it's highly unlikely that McConnell could convince the judge to go along with an unfair trial. But if he did, the only recourse the House would have for appeal is to that of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
It's not surprising that polling data in favor of impeachment got a bump after Nancy's big announcement. Just the like favorability of impeachment took a big hit after the Mueller testimony. The real question is, does the current polling data have legs? And while the polling data might suggest Trump's base is not growing, and maybe even shrinking, the FEC donations data says otherwise. In the 48 hours after Nancy's big announcement, the Trump campaign raised more than $15 million in small donations ($200 or less), and 20,000 of those donors were new donors. It's very difficult to characterize that as a shrinking base.
That probably true. A much more politically effective tactic would be to move to an immediate trial, and hand the Democrats a defeat.
The House Democrats want to move this to the Senate in order to be able to go, "Hey, America! We did all we could! So you need to vote for us again."
Since the day Trump was elected, the Democrats have been working hard, hard, and very hard, to come up with something to impeach Trump with. Everything from the literally fabricated Russia Collusion Hoax to digging up Ukrainian dirt on Manafort to Stormy Daniels to emoluments to taxes (you just KNOW there's some little impeachable nugget in those taxes) to now, a third-hand whistleblower account made possible by an incredibly Church Lady conveeeenient change in whistleblower requirements that by all appearances looks to be concocted, leaked and revealed in exactly the same way as the Steele Dossier. Except the people involved in the Steele Dossier, ir turns out, couldn't be kept anonymous. It's entirely possible, and very plausible based on previous attempts, that this whole thing was cooked up by anti-Trumpers in the administration (the Deep State, if you will), and fed to a whistleblower operative (in conjunction with the required changes in the whistleblower requirements to have first-hand knowledge of the complaint) so that the House would have to act on the complaint solely at face value and not be scrutinized because of whistleblower protections of anonymity, which is exactly what the House is trying fervently to do.
Here's a fun fact: He also loses the ability to delay investigations by asserting executive privilege if the House votes to officially conduct an impeachment investigation. That's not the same thing as Nancy's theatrics of announcing a formal inquiry (which keeps things precisely where they currently are - in the committees). If the House votes to undertake an official investigation, then the entire weight of the House of Representatives would be behind any and all subpoenas, and Trump can no longer claim executive privilege on anything that mattered.
