August 1, 2020: Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman Warns that Trump Imperils the Nation

 

August 1, 2020: August begins the way July ended, with a dire warning from one who worked inside the White House.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, left, and his brother Lt. Col. Yevgeny Vindman.

(Both were forced out of the U.S. Army in retaliation.)

 

In an op-ed piece in the Washington Post, now-retired Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman speaks out against the president. After 21 years, six months, and ten days, Vindman has left the U.S. Army. Vindman is a patriot and was scheduled for promotion to colonel. The Army review board said his service had been meritorious. 

He deserved to be advanced. 

President Trump had other plans. A campaign of retaliation commenced. The promotion was blocked. 

In what way had Vindman sinned?

 

____________________ 

“At no point in my career or life have I felt our nation’s values under greater threat and in more peril than at this moment.” 

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman

____________________

  

He had testified under oath, something the president would never dare. He told lawmakers in Congress that he had heard Trump’s call to the President of Ukraine. It was, he said, a craven attempt to force the Ukrainians to help him win re-election in 2020. Lt. Col. Vindman, a national security expert, warned that by holding up military aid to Ukraine, until the Ukrainians  agreed to “play ball,” the president had put U.S. national security at risk. 

This was what Dr. Fiona Hill and other White House security experts also said in their testimony. 

Vindman promised that in retirement he would not flinch. He would speak out against any “attacks on our national security,” as he saw them.

 

He would do all he could to “keep our nation safe and strong against internal and external threats.” 

External threats are a given with every nation on earth, across the recorded history of all the centuries. 

It was those “internal threats” that moved Lt. Col. Vindman to warn: 

At no point in my career or life have I felt our nation’s values under greater threat and in more peril than at this moment. Our national government during the past few years has been more reminiscent of the authoritarian regime [emphasis added] my family fled more than 40 years ago than the country I have devoted my life to serving.

 

An immigrant from the old Soviet Union, along with the rest of his family, Vindman’s career had been destroyed by “a mendacious president and his enablers.” He did not despair. He had bled for this country, something no member of the Trump clan has dared during 145 years on American soil. 

He continued: 

During my testimony in the House impeachment inquiry, I reassured my father, who experienced Soviet authoritarianism firsthand, saying, “Do not worry, I will be fine for telling the truth.” Despite Trump’s retaliation, I stand by that conviction. Even as I experience the low of ending my military career, I have also experienced the loving support of tens of thousands of Americans. Theirs is a chorus of hope that drowns out the spurious attacks of a disreputable man and his sycophants.

 

When a member of the congressional committee asked how he had the confidence to reassure his father that way, Vindman was clear. “Congressman, he replied, “because this is America. This is the country I have served and defended, that all my brothers have served, and here, right matters.” 

He remained hopeful despite his own fate. He had earned a promotion. It had been denied. “To this day, despite everything that has happened, I continue to believe in the American Dream. I believe that in America, right matters. I want to help ensure that right matters for all Americans.”

 

* 

AS FOR PROOF that Republican lawmakers have their priorities straight, Oklahoma State Rep. Sean Roberts threatened this week to revoke tax privileges for the N.B.A.’s Oklahoma Thunder. 

Roberts was in a tizzy because N.B.A. players were taking a knee during the National Anthem. He wanted to ensure Thunder players didn’t get any commie ideas. As he explained, “By kneeling ... the NBA and its players are showing disrespect to the American flag and all it stands for.” This “anti-patriotic act makes clear the NBA’s support of the Black Lives Matter group ... its ties to Marxism and its efforts to destroy nuclear families.” 

And you thought the BLM protesters just didn’t want police to kneel on the necks of unarmed blacks until they expired, or shoot them dead while they were trying to sleep in their own apartments! 

Saturday, the entire Thunder team donned “Black Lives Matter” t-shirts and took a knee at the start of its game. 

The Utah Jazz team joined them in protest.

 

* 

New cases of COVID-19, for August 1: 

58,947. 

 

POSTSCRIPT: It should concern all Americans to learn that the Department of Homeland Security was compiling reports on both protesters in Portland, and journalists who covered those protests. 

Because what you really need in any authoritarian system is police who possess knowledge of “unfriendly” reporters. 

See: Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, Muammar al-Gaddafi and Vladimir Putin, to name just a few. 

Brian Murphy, head of the intelligence branch at DHS, was reassigned after it was revealed he had disseminated such reports to law enforcement agencies. 

(He should have been fired.) 

Benjamin Wittes, author of the blog Lawfare, was one target for retribution. He had stirred Murphy’s wrath after releasing an email Murphy wrote to all federal agents, ordering them to refer to all Portland protesters as “VIOLENT ANTIFA ANARCHISTS.” You could even hear an echo of the president’s rage in that memo, complete with Murphy’s use of all capital letters.

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE (4/5/22), while proofreading older posts: The claims of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and Dr. Fiona Hill were eventually bolstered by Trump’s former National Security Advisor, the less-than-courageous John Bolton. Bolton saved his “testimony” and put it in a book for sale. He, too, insisted Trump put U.S. national security at risk, in service to his own selfish interests. 

Lt. Col. Yevgeny Vindman’s promotion to colonel was restored and Col. Vindman continues to serve this country proudly in uniform.

September 7, 2020: Did Trump Insult Dead Marines?

 

THIS POST IS PART OF A SERIES, 9/5/20, 9/6/20 AND 9/7/20, BEST READ IN SEQUENCE.

9/7/20: Having gone golfing on Saturday, and having golfed avidly on Sunday, and having worked his Twitter thumbs to exhaustion (70 Twitter posts on Sunday, alone), Trump hunkered down at the White House on Labor Day. With nothing better to do, it struck him as a phenomenal idea to hold another press conference. All such conferences now are really lengthy diatribes against political opponents, and anyone else Donald feels like insulting that day.

 

____________________ 

“John McCain liked wars. I will be a better warrior than anybody, but when we fight a war, we’re going to win them.” 

President Trump

____________________

 

 

The president’s overarching problem is that when he opens his mouth and words drip out in random order, an overwhelming majority of America’s assume he’s lying. In a Gallup poll earlier this summer, only 36% of respondents said they believed the president was “honest and trustworthy.” 

That number was elevated by the 72% of Republicans who believed, against all evidence, that the Easter Bunny was real.

 

News that the president had called dead Marines, killed during World War I, as “losers,” and referred to men and women who served in Vietnam “losers,” continued to dominate the news. I kept searching for insight. I found several brutal responses aimed at the president, and one defense. The latter was a letter signed by “about 674” veterans – an odd phrase, I thought – and shared with Breitbart on September 4. Signatories included at least three Medal of Honor recipients – and all respect to those brave men. 

That letter, however, seemed to indicate that minds had snapped shut like steel traps, without catching any facts. 

“Recent baseless media attacks against President Trump from anonymous sources,” the letter reads, “are just another example of the depths to which the President’s opponents are willing to descend to divide the nation and meddle in this election.”

 

So, was I wrong to believe Trump was capable of stooping so low? I could not help but notice that almost all the “denials” were focused on the visit to France in 2018. A great deal was being made of the president’s decision to skip the visit to the cemetery to pay respects to our fallen soldiers from World War I. The president’s defenders seemed to want to prove that safety concerns related to bad weather were why the president aborted the trip, not narcissism and worry about his hair. Aides insisted they had not heard him call the dead Marines “losers.” 

The problem with the “I didn’t hear it” defense is that it doesn’t prove Trump didn’t say what sources said he said. If four people say they heard it – and at least four anonymous sources say they did – then, if those sources would come forward, you could be nearly certain the president said what they said he said. 

I kept checking.

 

I found one tweet from a veteran, which I think adds great credence to my position, that Trump would be capable of going so low. It came from Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman’s brother, who had also run afoul of President Trump.

   

I would argue that the treatment of the two brothers proves almost beyond doubt that President Trump doesn’t have respect for our servicemen and women, and only cares about himself. 

We know Eugene Vindman’s brother was driven from the service by toadies in the Trump administration (the same enablers who defend him now). Lt. Col. Eugene Vindman has said quite publicly that after he filed his own whistleblower complaint, he was retaliated against by Trump officials. He, too, decided to take off the uniform he had worn with pride for many years.

 

I also found a story in The Hill, from September 4, summarizing comments from retired Lt. General Mark Hertling, in a talk with Don Lemon on CNN. Hertling told his host that he had spoken with active duty military as well as veterans. These men and women were “furious” when they heard reports of the president’s comments. “It’s tough to speak out right now if you’re an active-duty serving general officer,” Hertling said in an interview. “By not saying anything, they’re saying a lot.” 

(And if you do cross this president, your career is ruined, and you end up like the Vindman brothers.) 

I kept trying to sort out all the stories I could find. Multiple news outlets had confirmed most of the claims Jeffrey Goldberg made in The Atlantic. At least a dozen people inside the Trump orbit had apparently heard Trump disparage the troops. And on multiple occasions. (I even wondered: If The Atlantic says it had a source, and The New York Times said it had a source, and Jenifer Griffin of Fox News said she had a source, could they all be using the same anonymous source, so that where it looked like three witnesses to conversations had surfaced, there was really one?) 

Like a man possessed, I kept digging, deeper and deeper in the same hole, looking for gold nuggets of proof.

 

Let’s just say, I kept finding flakes. I checked Trump’s Twitter feed. If you carry out a word search, you’ll discover he has used the word “loser” to describe critics and enemies dozens of times. Crass, no-class insults are the president’s stock in trade. You know, if any president could ever refer to U.S. war dead as “losers,” and those who served in Vietnam as “suckers,” Trump is the one. 

On Twitter, the president’s habit of going low is always on view. Anthony Scaramucci, who Trump hired briefly to be his press secretary, is suddenly “a loser who begged to come back” after the president canned him. John Kasich, former Republican governor of Ohio, is “another loser.” CNN’s Chris Cuomo, “Fredo,” as Trump likes to call him, is a loser. So are the “lowlifes and losers” protesting in New York City right now. The people who work at CNN, are even worse, “sick losers” as the president calls them, in just one of countless attacks on the free press. Mitt Romney gets the ALL-CAPS treatment from the man with no class: “LOSER!” Chuck Schumer is a “totally overrated loser.” There are “RINO losers” too. Some “losers,” get nicknames: Elizabeth Warren is “Pocahontas,” Michael Bloomberg is “Mini Mike.” John Harwood, a reporter, is a “total loser,” which I assume is the worst kind of all. 

Then again, there are “stone cold losers” working for the Washington Post.

 

In fact, as soon as the Goldberg story broke in The Atlantic, Trump went on offense. To prove he would never call dead Marines from 1918 “losers,” he retweeted a post by Matt Schlapp, a soulless enabler if ever there was one. Schlapp had posted simplistically: “The Losers and Suckers work for the Atlantic. They are colluding with the socialists to stop Trump.” 

(Let’s just say one does not go wisely to Trump’s Twitter feed in search of facts, or even cogent analysis of current events. One goes for the lies, the polemics, and the inadvertent comedy.) 

You could even find Trump tweet-denying that he called John McCain a “loser.” Then you could check around a little, as noted yesterday, and easily find the tape and watch when he did.

 

* 

A press conference proves the president will always go low. 

IT’S TUESDAY by the time I complete this post. And I still can’t say with lead pipe certitude, that Trump said what Jeffrey Goldberg says sources said he said. I am not the only person, however, to notice that Gen. Kelly has remained silent, despite Trump’s cheap shot attacks. 

But I read through the transcript of the president’s Monday “press conference,” looking for new insight. And I would argue they provide all the evidence we need to decide what kind of man Donald Trump is. Is he capable of going to lows even those of us who don’t like him could never imagine? 

Absolutely.

 

This was vintage Trump on display, wine soured to vinegar, with a hint of arsenic. Here, on public display, the president went just as low as any of the anonymous sources in The Atlantic had said. At one point, Trump explained his dislike for Sen. McCain. The man is dead. You’d think he could let it go; but that’s not who Donald J. Trump is. “John McCain liked wars,” he claimed. “I will be a better warrior than anybody, but when we fight a war, we’re going to win them.” 

McCain, imprisoned and tortured for five years, “liked wars?” And Cadet Bone Spurs was a “better warrior than anybody?” 

Even I was a better warrior than Trump – and I was a supply clerk in the Marines, about as unheroic a job as there can possibly be.

Marine supply clerk - in California, during Vietnam War.

March 15, 2021: Dr. Birx Had a Sinking Feeling - The President Was an Idiot

 

3/15/21: The most recent U.S. intelligence assessment discounts the idea, pushed by former President Trump, that China interfered in the 2020 election in an effort to help sway a Biden win. 

Russia, however, did interfere on Trump’s side. 

Again. 

If it’s any consolation for Trump fans, Iran did what it could, spreading misinformation in hopes Mr. Biden would win.

 

* 

“You can see how extraordinarily uncomfortable I was.” 

MEANWHILE, Dr. Deborah Birx comments on one of the great moments of the pandemic. That would be the day Trump said we should drink disinfectant to protect ourselves from the virus. As a member then of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, she admits now that she was stunned. 

 “Frankly, I didn’t know how to handle that episode,” she explains. “I still think about it every day.” 

“You can see how extraordinarily uncomfortable I was,” Birx says. 

Trump’s comments were idiotic. But how could she say that during a press conference on national TV? “Those of you who have served in the military know that there are discussions you have in private with your commanding officers and there’s discussions you had in public.” 

She couldn’t just say, “That is the stupidest idea I ever heard of.” 

But it was.

 

Dr. Birx went on to say she and Dr. Anthony Fauci talked “all the time” about “how to correct the record.” That record was being constantly warped by Mr. Trump.

 

“I can’t tell you how many discussions we had on, how do we get the message out realizing what’s happening at the most senior levels of the White House,” she said finally.

 

*

Lt. Col. Yevgeny Vindman, rear, civilian clothes, listens to his twin brother testify

in the first Trump impeachment

 

“A top 1% military attorney and officer.”

 

IN ANOTHER throwback moment, the U.S. Army announces Lt. Col. Yevgeny Vindman is  to be promoted to full colonel. His promotion was blocked when his brother testified in the first impeachment of Donald J. Trump.

 

Vindman filed a complaint last August with the Pentagon inspector general. He claimed he  was retaliated against by his former White House counsel’s office bosses, John Eisenberg and Michael Ellis, for reporting misconduct by the president.

 

Eisenberg and Ellis filed what could have been a career-ending evaluation of Vindman last year, saying he lacked judgment and had lost the trust of senior NSC leadership, according to the complaint Vindman filed. The promotions board first met roughly two months after the negative evaluations, according to the two people familiar with the matter.

 

But Maj. Gen. Michel Russell, an assistant deputy chief of staff in the Army, conducted an investigation and found the evaluations to not be objective, according to the people.

 

Previously, Eisenberg had described Vindman as “a top 1% military attorney and officer.” He said “he can do any job in the legal field under unusual and constant pressure and scrutiny. Select now for SSC [Senior Service College] and promote immediately to COL. Absolutely unlimited potential!”

 

Moral of the story: Don’t cross Donald J. Trump. Because Eisenberg will start lying about you.