White House attack on veteran opens rift in GOP
Prominent right-wing media commentators have sought for weeks to cast aspersions on the House impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, echoing the president’s repeated cries of “witch hunt!” and framing the investigation as motivated by political bias.
This week, some of those commentators opened a new front: questioning the patriotism of Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman, the White House national security official and decorated Iraq War veteran who was testifying Tuesday that he had heard Trump ask Ukraine to investigate his Democratic political rival.
One pundit on Fox News went as far as to suggest that Vindman had engaged in “espionage” against the United States, prompting an unusual rebuke from a Republican member of Congress.
Vindman, who received a Purple Heart after he was wounded in Iraq, is a Ukrainian American immigrant who was 3 years old when his family fled to the United States. On her Fox News program Monday, conservative host Laura Ingraham sought to turn his ethnic background against him, noting that Ukrainian officials had recently sought the colonel’s advice about interacting with Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.
“Here we have a U.S. national security official who is advising Ukraine while working inside the White House, apparently against the president’s interest,” Ingraham said. “Isn’t that kind of an interesting angle on this story?”
Her guest, John Yoo, a former top lawyer in the George W. Bush administration, agreed. “I find that astounding,” Yoo said. “Some people might call that espionage.”
The accusation by Yoo was decried by left-leaning pundits and, Tuesday, by Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, a Republican lawmaker. “It is shameful to question their patriotism, their love of this country,” Cheney said, calling on critics to stop questioning the colonel’s loyalties.
Still, the notion that Vindman has some allegiance to a foreign country rapidly spread in right-wing circles, who apparently sensed a useful talking point to undermine testimony that is expected to be deeply damaging to Trump.
On Tuesday, the president repeatedly described Vindman as a “Never Trumper” in a series of posts on Twitter. On CNN’s “New Day,” Sean Duffy — a former Republican representative from Wisconsin and now a proTrump pundit — declared: “It seems very clear that he is incredibly concerned about Ukrainian defense. I don’t know that he’s concerned about American policy.”
Vindman, 44, grew up in Brooklyn, New York; completed basic training in 1999; and carried out numerous overseas tours in the Army, including in South Korea, Germany and Iraq. In 2003, he was wounded by a roadside bomb and received a Purple Heart. He has served in multiple U.S. embassies and joined the National Security Council in 2018.