Sean Duffy:
The former reality television star, turned congressman, turned CNN contributor has inadvertently and quite unintentionally performed a public service: He has exposed (at least for now) the limits of Trumpian indecency.
As David Frum noted yesterday, Trump World is “divided between those for whom Trump is a means to a goal vs those for whom Trump is the goal itself... That's the fault line down which Trump world will split.”
Duffy exposed that fault line by attacking a decorated military veteran who was testifying before Congress. Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman was awarded a Purple Heart after being wounded during a combat deployment to Iraq. The New York Times described him as "a scholar, diplomat, decorated lieutenant colonel in the United States Army and Harvard-educated Ukraine expert on the White House National Security Council."
None of that mattered to Trump World: Vindman was nothing except a threat. And so he had to be discredited. Vindman’s sin was his sworn testimony to Congress. “I did not think it was proper to demand that a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen,” he told legislators, “and I was worried about the implications for the U.S. government’s support of Ukraine.”
And so, because Trump required defending, Duffy reflexively smeared Vindman.
Undoubtedly, Duffy also thought he was doing his master’s bidding, following a trail already marked by Fox News the night before. Trump himself had sent out the signal, tweeting that Vindman was a “Never Trumper,” which would make him, by the president’s own stated definition, “human scum.”
Duffy may not be the hottest blowdryer in the green room, but even he could pick up what Trump was laying down.
***
Even before he resigned from Congress to assume his duties as a private sector Trumpian mouthpiece, Duffy had burrowed deep into a political culture primed to denounce the smallest signs of anything perceived as disloyalty to the dear leader. Military service, medals, decades of patriotic duty—none of these things count for anything unless you are down the Trump program, all of it, full-stop, for life.
The Vindman attacks are just the latest in a long line: Trump and his supporters have attacked Gold Star parents, POWs such John McCain, veterans such as Robert Mueller and William Taylor, even generals such as his former chief of Staff John Kelly and secretary of Defense Jim Mattis. And, with vanishingly few exceptions, the GOP has gone along with it.
[ If SI's Trumpturds were North Koreans, they'd be the ones with real (or simulated) tears in their eyes over the loss of the latest Dear Leader. If they were Nazis, they'd be the ones heiling the Fuhrer the loudest and most enthusiastic. That's exactly what their Great Gilded Turd wants, followers with no limits and no character left but that of devoted bootlickers.. They willingly sink to their knees ready to look the Master;s boots or whatever else he should want. ]
So when the CNN camera went live, Duffy was in his comfort zone and rather than refuting Vindman’s testimony, Duffy focused on the man’s ethnic heritage, and suggested that the Jewish immigrant might have had dual loyalties:
It seems very clear that he is incredibly concerned about Ukrainian defense. I don’t know that he’s concerned about American policy. . . . We all have an affinity to our homeland where we came from . . . he has an affinity for the Ukraine.
But then—amazingly—something snapped. The attack on Vindman seemed to cross some sort of invisible line and he blowback was quick, intense, and brutal.
Duffy’s CNN colleagues were the first to throw him under the bus. Anchor Brianna Keillor denounced what she called Duffy’s “anti-immigrant bigotry,” and noted pointedly that “it's an odd questioning of patriotism coming from Sean Duffy, the guy who spent part of his 20s on MTV’s The Real World . . . while Alexander Vindman spent his on foreign deployments.”
By the middle of the day, Duffy found himself deserted by Republicans, too, who rushed to defend Vindman’s patriotism. The harshest pushback came from Wyoming’s Liz Cheney, who called attacks on Vindman’s patriotism, “shameful.”
Other Republicans echoed Cheney:
“That guy’s a Purple Heart. I think it would be a mistake to attack his credibility,” said South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the No. 2 Senate Republican, in an interview. “You can obviously take issue with the substance and there are different interpretations about all that stuff. But I wouldn’t go after him personally. He’s a patriot.”
"This is the career military officer with a Purple Heart? I'm sure he's doing his best to serve his country," said Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), the No. 4 GOP leader. "Somebody can have a wrong sense of where they think the path goes but that doesn't mean that they're wrongly motivated . . . Criticizing this guy? No. I wouldn't be on board."
By the end of the day, thanks in part to Duffy, much of the GOP had publicly vouched for the veracity of a witness who may deliver some of the most damaging testimony against Trump at his impeachment trial.
And funnily enough it is still unclear whether Duffy understands that his eager attempt to fluff for the president has turned him into the latest specimen of Trumpian roadkill. As the man says: Everything Trump touches dies.
thebulwark |
