Oh puhleeeeze.

NBC reports:

Senate Republicans said lead impeachment manager Rep. Adam Schiff insulted them during the trial on Friday night by repeating an anonymously sourced report that the White House had threatened to punish Republicans who voted against President Donald Trump.

Bull. shit. Republicans can’t be insulted any further than they already have been by their own slavish surrender to the evil lying shit befouling the Oval Office.

Schiff, who delivered closing arguments for the prosecution, was holding Republican senators rapt as he called for removing Trump from office for abusing his power and obstructing Congress. Doing anything else, he argued, would be to let the president bully Senate Republicans into ignoring his pressure on Ukraine for political help.

“CBS News reported last night that a Trump confidant said that key senators were warned, ‘Vote against the president and your head will be on a pike.’ I don’t know if that’s true,” Schiff said.

After that remark, the generally respectful mood in the Senate immediately changed.

Republicans across their side of the chamber groaned, gasped and said, “That’s not true.” One of those key moderate Republicans, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, looked directly at Schiff, shook her head and said, “Not true.”

Rachel Maddow pointed out last night that speaking is forbidden on pain of imprisonment.

But more to the point – what the hell were they groaning and gasping about? It’s not as if that doesn’t fit a pattern after all. Trump threatens people all the time, in public, while we watch in fury and shame.

“Not only have I never heard the ‘head on the pike’ line,” Collins said in a statement, “but also I know of no Republican senator who has been threatened in any way by anyone in the administration.”

And if you believe that, I have a castle on the Florida coast not at all infested with rats that I would love to sell you.

“That’s when he lost me,” Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican moderate, said about Schiff’s remark, according to her spokeswoman. She denied having been told what the network reported about the White House. Schiff’s invocation of it, she added, “was unnecessary.”

Riiiiiight. The so-called “moderates” are not at all using this as their excuse for voting with the Jim Jordans and Devin Nuneses.