Lt. Colonel Vindman gives must-see response on possible Trump 2024 run (Brian Tyler Cohen interview)

[Music] okay today we have the author of the new book hear right matters lieutenant colonel alexander vinman thanks so much for coming on thank you for having me on so you've secured your place in history so i feel like i'd be missing out on a major opportunity if i didn't start with this uh could you walk me through the events of the phone call secured my place in history i've heard at least one person refer to it as a footnote which is a pretty harsh judgment by history uh and uh you know my my ambition is to end up being more than a footnote in somebody else's entry but you know that's it's a good starting point so the people i guess uh are familiar with me because of my testimony um following president trump's phone call with president zielinski on july 25 2019 in that phone call president trump attempted to extort an investigation into uh hunter biden and um implicate joe biden in road wrongdoing in order to help advance trump's incumbency and ability to to secure a re-election in 2020 and i was the official in on the call i actually was official that coordinated the call requested that the call happened monitored the portfolio um in in maybe a small way exercise the poor judgment and to let this thing happen in the first place but uh uh and uh once once it came off the rails and there's a lot of backstory i'm sure these questions will be asked but this was not just history did not stop and start in that moment um so after the phone call the pr sensing that the president was trying to do this steal an election uh i report it to proper channels and then ultimately a whistleblower complaint revealed this this president presidential wrongdoing and i was called to testify in front of congress a sitting army officer testifying against his commander-in-chief in an impeachment what was the phone call like in the sense that did you understand while it was happening the gravity of what was happening so like for for the rest of us like once it kind of you know sank in we all had the benefit of being able to look around and being like wait this this isn't good is it but but you were there in real time it was happening in real time so were you able to understand that gravity while it was happening i i i did it was in a way a slow moving train wreck uh over the preceding months that's a good way to describe the entire last four years but i think that's fair uh i think that's fair with one caveat because this is important to to mention is that you still had a enormous amount of uh just amazing public servants toiling away trying to continue to advance u.s national security interests and uh in oftentimes not in a kind of a deep state looking to undo the president's policy but to manage the crises that the president himself created unintentionally mainly because of incompetence that was that was kind of the the labor over the past four years uh and in in a certain way these uh these folks that remain in government to this day still need to do undo some of the damage that was created um institutions were harmed but i wanted to make sure i answer your question so could you answer ask her one more time and i'll make sure i i answer it that was did you understand the gravity of what was happening while it was happening i did understand the gravity and that's again because it was a train wreck because over the preceding months you had um non-governmental officials folks close to the present the president's inner circle intervening into foreign policy into national security matters that happened started to happen months before ultimately resulted in machiavanovic being fired from her position as ambassador alter further undermined our ability to engage with ukraine uh when vice president pence the designated official to attend the inauguration president zielinski's inauguration in ukraine backed out to occur when rudolph giuliani proceeded to demand investigations into the bidens you had a hold on security assistance you had all sorts of things unfolding on that phone call the only piece that was missing is who was the driving force so i understood what was going on uh what i understood you know what the play was to favor the president and in president trump in the upcoming 2020 elections but what i had can maybe in certain ways because of my reverence for the office of the president and being a serving military officer tried to believe that the president no as bad as he was wasn't was involved and the president coming on that line the tone from the very beginning suggested this was going to be a bad phone call and when president zielinski asked for more javelins to defend his country against russian aggression the president chimed in with i need you to do us a favor though it all kind of came together and um after that i went to report this to the legal officials on the national security council to get that get this undone try to stem the kind of the the the damage and i walked into my brother twin brother's office because i wanted to be a witness to to my complaint and i told her close the door i told him eugene if what i'm about to tell you ever becomes public the president would be impeached never believing he was gonna it was gonna be become public because there was you know it's all in the classified space but it did and the president was impeached are you able to say what eugene said after that uh i don't reca i think we just deliberated over you know what this what this means he uh he immediately latched on to the gravity of the situation and uh we discussed you know um whether it be wise to pull him into this meeting because it would already uh i was going to be i was going to run into headwinds and whether it was wise to pull him in and we you know that was a very very brief discussion because my twin brother you know what basically the closest person in the in the world to me you know along with my wife and daughter he was there for me he joined me in in reporting the phone call he sat behind me when i testified he was basically there all along the way now did you know you were going to be excommunicated immediately immediately upon taking this to nsc officials and your brother i had hopes that things were going to turn out a different way i had i was pretty clear to me really quite early on uh even actually as i went in there i mean this is one of the things we i discussed with with eugene as i was about to make the complaint to john eisenberg that there were going to be significant risks this is a notoriously vindictive trump administration was a notoriously vindictive administration you know uh this spectacle of firings and so forth so i thought you know worst case scenario maybe i leave the white house i had a year under my belt it's a very successful year i had a very an excellent evaluation from from my boss fiona hill what's the worst that could happen i you know i'd move on i would be in a good position to um secure promotion to colonel to go on to the senior service college which is like this very very tough uh cut um only a very small number seven percent really make it to that level so i thought i would still be in decent standing there i turned out that my hopes in that regard were a little bit misplaced now what was the environment in the white house like for you and the events leading up to trump's impeachment obviously this started to come out your involvement was known and yet you still have to show up there to work every day and what you yourself conceded was a vindictive administration sure so uh you know in the first year i was a valued member of the staff with access to basically all of the leadership uh the national security advisor deputy national security advisor and uh almost immediately after making my complaint i was ostracized and this is really frankly what still when when john bolton was uh was still in in uh seat before he was fired and replaced by um you know even a lesser much less competent official um o'brien but i immediately you know i was i was removed from from trips that i should be on there was one trip in in august to ukraine moldova and belarus all three countries in my portfolio it'd be unheard of for me not to go on that so it was a signal that i was no longer in good standing i was being cut out of meetings at the political level but at the same time the only the reason i stayed on is because i still thought i was well positioned to do good things i was maybe politically unreliable to the kind of nefarious characters uh that were looking to serve the president's interests but amongst the departments and agencies the folks i work with the deputy assistant secretaries you know george kent george kent uh laura cooper other folks uh in other departments and agencies those are two folks that testified i was in good standing and i could still do my job i was i still was able to operate within my office it's just above that level uh it became very difficult and i knew that i was every action i was doing was scrutinized they were looking for dirt on me and whatever they could to kind of trip me up i know that trump's acolytes will attack anyone who doesn't toe the line as some you know far left communist democrat did you identify as being part of a political party or do you now so and now i'm definitely you know kind of bending towards the the democratic party for a couple different reasons uh i would and i've not had this question before so i'm kind of glad that you know i guess you asked it i've been nonpartisan for for the entirety of my military career i mean unfortunately i took that to extremes and didn't vote uh too often in elections i registered as an 18 year old as a democrat i grew up in new york city that was kind of natural thing to do and i guess at some point later on i registered as a as an independent just because in certain states it's easier to kind of vote for whichever candidate you think is best positioned whether that's primaries or general elections but my my own personal kind of leanings probably tend to be uh to hew a little bit closer to the right on foreign policy issues based on my first-hand experience and the desire to have a strong defense but towards the left on social issues uh i mean i i cannot kind of stomach the the views of the republican the mainstream republican party that's kind of bought into to trump's uh uh trump and trumpism um you know with disdain for people that are not not white um you know that are regressive on immigra unbelievably regressive on immigration issues i'm an immigrant so i i take some of those things personally lgbt issues inequality which is probably one of the fundamental issues affecting the united states uh i think that the republican party is out of step with the bulk of society and then even on the you know on the national security stuff that probably tend to be a little bit more hawkish on because i understand russia and the fact that we need to take a strong one with russia that you know i have probably a slightly more nuanced view on you know budgetary issues and things that nature so it's a it's i guess i could fall into the moderate category now there were two tranches of people who've spoken out publicly against trump uh there was the first one you know while he was in office the people who were retaliated against and skewered by republicans and that's people like you marie ivanovic fiona hill and then there was the second people who've come out now that trump's safely out of office people like uh like bill barr who's trying to rehab his image now do you have any messages for the bill bars of the world who've waited until the coast was clear to suggest that in fact they were also some saviors for democracy you know i take a maybe a strategic view on this uh and i say uh we we should pick up all of the allies we can get we are facing a very very difficult struggle to wrestle one a significant segment of society out of trump and trumpism and we should listen to what they have to say they probably have some valid criticisms but that does not mean in any way that we should not hold these folks accountable uh we probably need to in a lot of ways encourage more people to step forward because on my my drum beat of accountability these are folks that were in the know and knew all the misdeeds know where the skeletons are know where the bodies are buried we need to encourage those folks to speak out and and in certain ways be a little bit more measured in our criticism don't get me wrong don't get me wrong these are people that had every opportunity to step out when it mattered when it mattered into going into elections when it mattered to expose presidential corruption they failed to do that we should hold them to account but we also need to hear what they have to say and and add that ammunition to to to the fire that we need to uh apply to trump and trumpism that is the biggest threat and we shouldn't be kind of distracted by you know uh seeking kind of retribution for some sort of tactical victory we have a strategic objective in mind that's definitely fair um do you see a link between a republican party that not only abandoned you but tried to destroy you and you know as a member of the military which the gop has sold itself as a strong defender of and now how the republican party has not only abandoned but tried to destroy the police officers attacked on january 6th and of course the republican party's also branded itself as a strong defender of the police it is uh that is an absolutely disgusting feature of party politics and the republican party that exists today it is hard to kind of understand a party that is so duplicitous so two-faced that on one in one moment can claim to be pro-national security pro-defense pro-police and then demonize the the folks with it coming out of those institutions that up and i'm not talking about myself but the folks like the folks that defended held the line on january 6 that epitomize service selfless service that is disgusting and one of the things i've i've talked about repeatedly now is that those politicians need to be held to account they're duplicitous they fail to to live up to their oaths and their obligations and we should not in we should not let them off the hook in upcoming elections this should be thrown right back in their faces and this should be one of the key items that they're addressed on we should not you know this there's this mirage around policy disagreements and how the right uh republican party still kind of adheres to principled policy approaches that is not true yeah they do not have a policy they literally did not have a policy platform going into 2020 elections yeah who's backing trump and trumpism so there is that is a red-hairing argument that you know this is a policy disagreement it's not it's a a culture war and on one hand we have we have uh cowardly uh un-american duplicitous behavior in the other hand we have uh we have folks that are trying to do the right thing and this is not about this is not i'm not even talking about politics or uh political parties i'm just talking about the human beings that that are kind of exemplifying trying to do something good for this country and are being attacked this symbol i wear on my shoulder the american flag it means something to me it i i this is the one of the reasons i've been wearing this on every uh appearance i had pretty much is because i want to take this symbol back americans we are too often now see this as as a symbol of trump and trumpism it is being stolen by a far right that along with a trump flag flies an american flag that is not what america is about it's not about idolatry it's not about the mirage of uh uh and the cult of personality around an individual it's about the 50 states all of us being together he pluribus unum and uh this is what this is what the symbol means to me and this is what i think uh we should remember and we should all fly this frankly fly the symbol proudly it's a it's a symbol of hope building on that you know given your intimate experience with with donald trump what are your thoughts on the prospect of a presidential run in 2024 i think it's unrealistic i think the guy is going to do as much damage as you can i mean i'm not a political guy so this is like as this opinion is as good as like you know stopping somebody on the street or something like that but you know from a strategic standpoint it seems hard to fathom a 20-24 run from a president that continues to kind of divvy up a pie and get smaller and smaller slices of the electorate in in the 2020 elections president biden blew out president trump 81 million to 74 million in change that's a huge margin of 7 million votes an unprecedented large margin uh but even even that and that was a large segment of the electorate for for uh president trump it's hard to kind of understand how that unfolded i don't don't ask me how but there's no question in my mind that after january 6 that number shrank and it continues to shrink with the provocation of the big lie and the divisiveness so it's hard to imagine how you know he could be a viable candidate it's it's quite possible he might make it through the primary but he's not going to be a viable general election candidate the question is what does he do in the meantime uh how much does he continue to polarize the party and and make the republican party a shadow of itself a republican party that at one point the granddaughter party that had honor on it because it was the party of lincoln is in no way resembles what it is today and um i think that the president is going to pick you know target individuals that are not trumpy enough for him and make their lives a living hell potentially be successful a mixed bag of successes but he's going to do an enormous amount of damage while he's while he's doing that and uh you know i hate on the one hand this idea of trump stealing the airwaves because he does but um on the other hand it's important to kind of denounce him and uh shine light on his corruption let's end with this you know you said uh while you were testifying dad don't worry i'll be fine for telling the truth what message do you have for your dad now that this chapter is finally over this was an important i guess uh element uh that both for me because i you know i took the time to address this with my dad it was my twin brother that gets credit he's the one that said i should uh make this entry uh into my opening statement to put my dad's mind at ease but it's also kind of the broader message i guess of writing this book the reason i wrote this book is that there was an opportunity to respond to all of the positivity all the support i received that i couldn't possibly answer individually but could potentially do it by by doing writing a book and talking about the things that were important to me what it was about my immigrant background a feature that all americans share deep roots or recent roots as immigrants talking about service which is unfortunately becoming a more distant uh concept because there are so few people that serve in the military something i really strongly encourage not just military service but federal service state service community service talking about that and what it means and kind of uh touting the abilities of our public servants in office and talking about frankly the the tools i assembled through my experiences to navigate a very very difficult to fear uh affair um how to do the right thing in the right way what what what it took to get do that and how to live with the consequences on the back end nothing has been easy my dad was right in that regard uh that there were personal costs nothing has been easy everything has been a challenge nothing's been given to me uh i have had to continue to work really really hard but i could live with my actions i could live with the consequences of my actions because i know they made an impact and what i tell my dad is what i would tell other americans doing the right thing is its own reward doesn't give you a free pass but it does give you a way to kind of continue to live with yourself look your children in the eye and uh be the person that you want to be well he's got a lot to be proud of so again the book is hear right matters uh lieutenant colonel vinman thank you for taking the time to talk today and thank you for standing up for what's right thank you thank you you

Channel: Brian Tyler Cohen

Views: 598,100

Keywords: Brian Tyler Cohen, Trump, Republicans, Democrats, brian cohen, lt colonel alexander vindman, alexander vindman, trump 2024, january 6, vindman

Id: VUZmaC-8Pcw

Length: 21min 17sec (1277 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 09 2021