Yesterday and this morning, I wanted to get some sense of how the right was responding to the testimony of Ambassador Bill Taylor. I looked at the National Review’s blog and saw that they were more interested in Trump’s lynching comments. I turned on Fox News and they were discussing elitist Hollywood parents who cheat their kids into good colleges. I got the sense that their strategy is to ignore the proceedings in Congress as much as possible on the theory that their audiences and funders don’t want to hear uncomfortable truths.

But that doesn’t mean that the right isn’t in a panic about what happened on Tuesday. The best evidence for that is what they did first thing on Wednesday morning:

Dozens of House Republicans on Wednesday stormed the secure facility inside the Capitol where impeachment investigators have been deposing witnesses, forcing a delay to the proceedings on the heels of damning new revelations that could further imperil President Donald Trump.

The two sides were at an impasse on Wednesday afternoon after trying to settle the standoff, with Republicans who do not sit on the committees leading the inquiry refusing to leave the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) in the basement of the Capitol, and Democrats insisting those lawmakers had no right to be there.

This isn’t normal, folks.

It’s already a giant clusterfuck.

According to people familiar with the matter, some GOP lawmakers brought their cell phones into the secure area — a significant violation of House rules. Another person said the room had to be fully swept for potential security breaches, and Democrats said the Republicans compromised national security by bringing electronics into a secure area.

Republicans said House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) was threatening GOP lawmakers with ethics violations. Schiff was also consulting with the House’s sergeant at arms, while Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Laura Cooper — who appeared for her deposition Wednesday morning — was still waiting to testify behind closed doors.

And, yes, this is all Trump’s doing:

The GOP stunt, led by House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.), comes as Trump has demanded that Republicans “get tough and fight” for him in the impeachment probe. But Republicans have struggled to defend Trump on the substance of the allegations against him, and have instead focused on hammering Democrats over what they see as an illegitimate impeachment process.

The president’s defense is crumbling on every front at this point. It’s not just Taylor’s testimony that is devastating to his case. I’ve been writing about how scandalous Giuliani’s behavior has been, and that is hardly getting any focus right now. Then there’s reporting from the New York Times that debunks Trump’s insistence that the Ukrainians couldn’t have been extorted over military aid because they did not know the aid was being withheld.  There is reporting from the Washington Post that destroys Trump’s claim that he was primarily concerned about giving aid to a corrupt government:

The Trump administration has sought repeatedly to cut foreign aid programs tasked with combating corruption in Ukraine and elsewhere overseas, White House budget documents show, despite recent claims from President Trump and his administration that they have been singularly concerned with fighting corruption in Ukraine.

The article goes on to demonstrate the cuts proposed by the White House to combat illegal narcotics trafficking in Ukraine, as well as to the Economic Support and Development Fund which has a strong anti-corruption component.

So, instead of attempting to buttress the president’s indefensible excuses, the House Republicans have simply staged a sit-in to highlight what they claim is an unfair investigatory process. In the bargain, they have delayed testimony from Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Laura Cooper, but that’s a temporary victory. She will eventually explain what she knows about the withheld Ukrainian military assistance, and this will further bolster the case for Trump’s impeachment and removal from office.

The sit-in is a clever idea, but the way they went about it is highly corrosive. I can’t help but think this will create new divisions within the Republican Caucus. Disrespecting basic security rules isn’t something that will be taken lightly, and the Freedom Caucus isn’t very popular with the Republicans who aren’t members.

This is what desperation looks like.