President Trump will be acquitted today. We can’t talk around that fact.

But that doesn’t mean that the conduct that put him in this pinch in the first place will be swept under the rug. House Judiciary Committee Chair and impeachment manager Jerry Nadler (D-NY) reassured reporters this morning that it is “likely” his committee will issue that subpoena that former National Security Adviser John Bolton has been begging for for weeks.

It’s hardly surprising, but President Trump just used the National Prayer Breakfast to drag his impeachment foes, pointedly mocking Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) for his declaration of faith from the Senate floor and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).

Exactly 21 years and six days ago, former President Bill Clinton took to the podium in the White House Rose Garden and delivered a stone-faced apology to the American people for “what I said and did.”

President Trump has made clear repeatedly over the last week that he is not only vindicated but wants payback meted out against his political opponents. Susan Collins lamely claimed Trump had learned his lesson by being impeached. Even she had to take that back and say she hoped he had. Numerous press reports from news organizations with strong sourcing inside the White House say that Trump not only feels vindicated and wants payback but feels something like invincible. All the ‘adults in the room’ told him not to do this and not to do that. He did all of it and more and what happened? He’s still President. He’s even reasonably well positioned for reelection. So, he reasons, he was right all along and he can in fact do anything he wants.

Along those lines I want to point out just two things we’ve learned in the last forty-eight hours.

President Trump was never going to just roll over and take solace in his acquittal.

And after yesterday’s dark and blatantly bonkers speech from the White House celebrating his acquittal, it’s no surprise that he and his allies are already retaliating against those who wronged the President. As an image-obsessed leader who demands nothing short of cult-like loyalty from all who have access to him, it’s easy to believe new reports from Bloomberg News and the Washington Post that the White House is planning to reassign Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman back to the Department of Defense.

I had thought the intra-Democratic divisions this year couldn’t help but be less than 2016. Divisions usually come more to the surface when a party has had a decent run in power. They’re not as hungry for the presidency. The risks of its loss are less palpable. There’s more focus on reordering who the dominant party faction is. The crisis of President Trump you would think would concentrate people’s minds. And indeed poll after poll shows just that: overwhelmingly Democrats want whoever can beat Trump.

But that’s not how it’s looking.

An update from the New York suburbs from TPM Reader FB …

Tonight, a Republican County Legislator in Westchester County New York, David Tubiolo from Yonkers, switched parties and became a Democrat. This left the 17-member Westchester County Board of Legislators, which as recently as 3 years ago had a Republican coalition majority and arch-conservative County Executive, with NO REPUBLICANS. The sole remaining member of the minority caucus is a registered Conservative from the town of Mt. Pleasant.