"The most gratifying loss last night was that of a real treasonous creep, Alexander Vindman, to a Radical Left Lunatic, who can’t speak or think properly..."

"... and who will go down to certain defeat at the hands of Ashley Moody, a truly Fantastic Senator, from the Great State Florida. Vindman, if you remember, was the one who lied about my 'Perfect Call' with President Zelenskyy of Ukraine, only to find out that the conversation was routinely recorded and proved that I was 100% in the right (Completely Innocent!). It was, indeed, a Perfect Call, and the Dumocrats Fake Impeachment effort massively failed. Vindman should be prosecuted for what he did! President Donald J. TRUMP."

That's Trump, obviously, at Truth Social just now. 

Here's the NYT article about Vindman's defeat: "The Left Notches Another Win With This Secret Weapon: Old-Fashioned Organizing/State Representative Angie Nixon scored a stunning upset on Tuesday in Florida’s Democratic Senate primary. Her victory will test the strength of a democratic socialist in a red state" (gift link)("The flip side to Ms. Nixon’s victory is that it may turn what was widely seen as a long-shot goal for Democrats — defeating a sitting Republican senator in comfortably red Florida — into an even longer shot. The Cook Political Report has consistently rated the race this year as 'solid R'").

Trump is doing a live "town hall" show on CNN tonight.

Let's see how the major news media are handling this story the morning of:

The New York Times: Media correspondent Michael M. Grynbaum asks, "Should a leading presidential contender be given the opportunity to speak to voters on live television?" Wow. That suggests it could be considered unethical to give air to the horrible man.

Joy Reid, an anchor on rival MSNBC, derided the event as “a pretty open attempt by CNN to push itself to the right and make itself attractive and show its belly to MAGA.” Her colleague Chris Hayes called the town hall “very hard to defend.” Critics asked why CNN would provide a live platform to someone who defended rioters at the United States Capitol and still insists the 2020 election was rigged. Those objections intensified on Tuesday after Mr. Trump was found liable for the sexual abuse and defamation of the writer E. Jean Carroll. “Is @CNN still going to do a town hall with the sexual predator twice impeached insurrectionist?” Alexander S. Vindman, the Army colonel who was a witness in Mr. Trump’s first impeachment trial, wrote on Twitter.... 

Politico: The headline is "Trump world booked CNN hoping for a big audience. Now, they’re in the thick of it/The former president will fundraise off the E. Jean Carroll verdict. But he also has to get through a televised town hall where it will come up."

"The U.S. could have refused to elucidate its security commitments to Ukraine, much as it has done vis-à-vis Taiwan for decades. The implicit threat of U.S. and NATO intervention..."

"... would have forced Putin to contend with the risks of further escalation. Instead, Biden granted Putin a free hand. The U.S. also refused to provide advanced weapon systems to Ukraine.... And for those who might argue that Russia would have preempted the shipment of weaponry by invading, I would contend that if invasion was already the predicted outcome, what was there to lose? All the while, the Biden administration failed to pair diplomatic overtures with sufficiently powerful, credible military pressure, perhaps over fears of a bilateral conflict with Russia. These fears were misplaced. I can say from my significant experience dealing with the highest levels of Russia’s military leadership that it has no interest in a bilateral confrontation with the U.S. Russian leaders have zero desire for nuclear war, and they understand that they would inevitably lose in a conventional war. However, Russia excels at compelling the U.S. to self-deter.... Over and over, the president’s longtime senior advisers seem to have recommended narrow, low-risk policy options, and these backfired."

From  "America Could Have Done So Much More to Protect Ukraine/The paths to deterrence were not taken" in The Atlantic.

That's by Alexander Vindman. Remember him?

"The idea that Vindman would have grown up with any sense of fealty to the Ukrainian volk is patently absurd, not only because he and his twin brother are clearly ardent American patriots..."

"... who have committed their lives to this country’s service but because I have yet to meet a single Jew who came to America from the Soviet Union who feels any kind of personal or historical tie beyond any relatives who might have been left behind."

From "Vindman is a Jew, Not a Ukrainian, Mr. Duffy/A loaded charge" by John Podhoretz (at Commentary).

I'm reading about attacks on Vindman, but let's look at why Vindman matters. I'll read "White House Ukraine Expert Sought to Correct Transcript of Trump Call/Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman, who heard President Trump’s July phone call with Ukraine’s president and was alarmed, testified that he tried and failed to add key details to the rough transcript" (NYT).

Excerpt:

The omissions, Colonel Vindman said, included Mr. Trump’s assertion that there were recordings of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. discussing Ukraine corruption, and an explicit mention by Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, of Burisma Holdings, the energy company whose board employed Mr. Biden’s son Hunter.

Colonel Vindman, who appeared on Capitol Hill wearing his dark blue Army dress uniform and military medals, told House impeachment investigators that he tried to change the reconstructed transcript made by the White House staff to reflect the omissions. But while some of his edits appeared to have been successful, he said, those two corrections were not made.

Colonel Vindman did not testify to a motive behind the White House editing process.

So there's the old question of whether the transcript is completely reliable and the new questions about the importance of these 2 things that were (allegedly) said but left out.

The phrases do not fundamentally change lawmakers’ understanding of the call...

Okay, then it's only about how complete and reliable the transcript is. It's reconstructed and not verbatim. But there's no new material from Vindman that matters. Vindman is only useful for the proposition that not everything is in the transcript, and then, I presume, the idea is to add in things that do matter from others who unlike Vindman, did not listen into the conversation but only heard about it second hand (or third or fourth hand). That feels quite tenuous.

If there was something important that was left out, why isn't Vindman the one to tell us about it? You have to say that he was troubled by what happened to trouble him and though that turns out not to be important, there were other things that were important but that just didn't happen to trouble Vindman, and here's a second/third/fourth-hand witnesses who can tell us about that.

I'm skeptical because I assume that things would tend to become more troubling as they are retold, remembered, and retold again.