Trump and his National Security Adviser, Robert O’Brien, dug an even deeper hole for themselves today by continuing to focus public attention on the president’s quest for revenge over impeachment, and by continuing to defame the good name of one Alexander Vindman, Lieutenant Colonel, United States Army.
Trump spoke about Vindman and other matters during an impromptu talk with reporters after a bill signing in the Oval Office. He repeated the same demonstrably false charges against Vindman that we debunked here at ResCon1 yesterday and then added:
[He] did a lot of bad things. So we sent him [Vindman] on his way to a much different location, and the military can handle him any way they want. Gen. Milley has him now. I congratulate Gen. Milley. He can have him, and his brother also…”
When asked whether Vindman should face disciplinary action, Trump said: “That’s going to be up to the military; we’ll have to see. But if you look at what happened, they’re going to, certainly, I would imagine, take a look at that.”
This led to a flurry of news headlines like this one in Politico: “Trump says military may consider disciplinary action against Vindman.”
Later in the day, in a Q&A before the Atlantic Council, O’Brien chimed in with this gem: “We’re not a banana republic where lieutenant colonels get together and decide what the policy is.”
Margaret Brennan, the host of CBS News’ Face the Nation, then reportedly challenged O’Brien. Is that what you think happened? she asked. O’Brien said no, he was just making the point that that’s not how U.S. policy is made, tweeted Ali Rogin, a reporter with the PBS News Hour.
In other words, O’Brien first smeared Vindman, then says he doesn’t believe the smear. He’s just making the point that people who defend Vindman have a distorted or warped understanding of how public policy is made in the United States.
They (we) think that “a group of lieutenant colonels” (or other National Security Council bureaucrats) get to override the commander-in-chief and make public policy. But that’s not how it’s done. The United States, after all, is not a “banana republic.”
False Talking Point. This has become a favorite talking point of Trump apologists Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham: the notion that Vindman and other NSC staffers (“bureaucrats”) tried to superimpose their will over that of the president.
As these apologists tell it, the real wrong was not Trump’s phone call to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, but rather the effort by Vindman and other bureaucrats to falsely malign Trump simply because they did not like his policy, which they viewed as straying from their prepared talking points. But the president gets to make policy, not the bureaucrats! cry Hannity and Ingraham.
Nice try, but no cigar. Obviously the president (and Congress) decide U.S. foreign policy. No one—including Vindman—disputes that. That’s never been at issue.
Indeed, Vindman did not raise concerns about Trump’s phone call because he disagreed with Trump’s policy, or the policy of the U.S. government vis-a-vis Ukraine. To the contrary: he was an enthusiastic supporter and executor of that policy.
Instead, he raised concerns because it appeared to him that Trump was demanding that a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen and political opponent (Joe Biden), and because he believed that such a demand would undermine stated and long-standing U.S. foreign policy.
Vindman had a solemn obligation, both as a U.S. citizen and as a U.S. military officer, to raise those concerns with his chain of command, which he did. Yet, in typical Trumpian fashion, O’Brien nonetheless smears Vindman with an utterly false charge.
Banana Republic. O’Brien is, however, absolutely right about America not being a banana republic. This means that the president, even Trump, does not have dictatorial power. He is restrained (or at least should be restrained) by the Constitution, Congress, and the rule of law. Yet, O’Brien and other Trump lackeys seem not to fully appreciate this.
As for disciplinary action against Vindman because he testified before Congress after being subpoenaed, it won’t happen. The U.S. military is far more professional than the president.
The Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, have stated publicly that Vindman will be protected from retribution “or anything like that.” “We protect all of our people [and have] already addressed that in policy and [through] other means,” Esper said.
In fact, to anyone who knows anything about the U.S. military, the notion that Vindman would suffer retribution is ludicrous. Senior military leaders fully recognize and appreciate the political perils and landmines that accompany service on the National Security Council.
They also recognize and appreciate that Trump is, to put it mildly, a completely unique and unusual president. Thus Vindman’s service will not be held against him. To the contrary: it will be recognized for what it was: exceptional, especially considering how politicized national security decision-making had become under pressure from Trump and Rudy Giuliani.
Thus it has been publicly announced that after a brief tour at the Pentagon, Vindman will be attending the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
But what does this sordid incident say about the Commander-in-Chief when he suggests that a U.S. military officer should be punished for testifying, truthfully and dispassionately, before Congress?
What does it say about his understanding of the men and women whom he’s entrusted to lead? What does it say about his understanding of the Constitution and the rule of law? And what does it portend for our future as a free and self-governing people?
Feature photo credit: The Hindu.