One good measure of how very, very far down an unpleasant rabbit hole the nation has plunged is simply this: John Bolton’s time as national security adviser now seems not so awful. Sure, Bolton is a paranoid warmonger who never met a bomb he didn’t like. On the other hand, he did seem to have some concerns other than whether he was making Donald Trump happy in every moment. When it comes to new national security adviser Robert O’Brien, the best that can be said is that he seems to be … unencumbered by ethics.
On Tuesday, not only did O’Brien embrace xenophobic Twitter conspiracy theories that the coronavirus outbreak in China might be a bioweapon, but he also claimed that the removal of both Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and his twin brother from the National Security Council was not retaliation for Vindman’s testimony during House impeachment hearings against Donald Trump. But this seems like a time when O’Brien should be reading Twitter. Because that claim is absolutely counter to what Trump has openly admitted.
O’Brien’s claims about Vindman came at the same venue where he made his chuckling suggestion that China might have created a virus that has now infected over 40,000 of its own citizens, a discussion at the Atlantic Council think tank. During that discussion, The Wall Street Journal reports, O’Brien claimed that he could “absolutely” say that the Vindman brothers were “not retaliated against.” Instead, said O’Brien, it was simply “time for them to go back” to the Army, because “their services were no longer needed.”
Alexander Vindman was the White House’s top expert on Ukraine, including on its governmental affairs and its military concerns. Clearly Trump no longer needs that expertise. He has Rudy Giuliani to fill that role. Yevgeny Vindman’s role on the NSC was as an expert on international law and ethics. So … clearly a superfluous position in the Trump White House.
Of course, Trump has given a different reason for the removal of Alexander Vindman, calling him a “never Trumper” and saying that he was “very insubordinate” for responding to a congressional subpoena and reporting his concerns about the plot to extort Ukraine. In an appearance on Tuesday, Trump told reports that Vindman had “reported a false call,” without explaining what he meant by this. And rather than just saying that Vindman had returned to the Army, Trump said that he had been sent “to a much different location” where “the military can handle him any way they want.” Which makes it seem much more like Vindman is on his way to Abu Ghraib than to the Pentagon. Trump went on to suggest that Vindman should face “disciplinary action” for the crime of testifying—a statement that made a heartbreaking lie of Vindman’s assurance to his father that in America, he could come to no harm for telling the truth.
Even O’Brien’s claim that the Vindman brothers had been sent home after completing their time at the White House only lasted a few more sentences, before the new national security adviser retreated to the phrase that Trump supporters have been using to justify the firing of qualified staffers since the day Trump began his occupation: “At the end of the day,” said O’Brien, “the president is entitled to staffers that want to execute his policies and he has confidence in.”
There’s been little doubt from day one, and absolutely no doubt since the acquittal vote in the Senate, that what’s meant by this is that Trump will not tolerate anyone who presents the least obstacle to corruption. O’Brien seems safe on this point.
And O’Brien might even have an excuse for passing on Twitter-based conspiracy theories about the origin of the Corvid-19 virus: On a National Security Council so depleted of resources that only those loyal to Trump remain, conspiracy theories from the back side of the web might be the best intelligence available.