Foreign Affairs

The killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State, should have been triumph for Trump - as Trump supporters say, you can't spell "triumph" without "Trump" - and for America, but Trump somehow managed to turn this victory into a defeat.  He described al-Baghdadi's death in greater detail than he should have and said that he died like a dog, the sort of language that Arabs take as an insult - which means he just made a video for Islamic State recruitment.  Also, his failure to inform Nancy Pelosi or Charles Schumer and his thanks to Russian President Vladimir Putin made it look like he put party over country . . . and another country over his own.  When he attended a World Series game between the Washington Nationals and the Houston Astros Sunday night - mere hours after announcing the death of al-Baghdadi - he was greeted by boos and chants of "Lock him up!,", meaning he's already spent the political capital he'd gained from this operation.

Trump supporters did their guy no favors by attacking Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, a Ukraine expert who testified about Trump's dealings with Ukraine's president and expressed concern over how the arms sale to Ukraine - fighting a proxy war with Russian-backed separatists in the eastern provinces - came with strings attached for the Ukrainians and how Trump's demands for dirt on Joe Biden and his son jeopardized Ukrainian sovereignty and American national security.  Colonel Vindman was born in Ukraine when it was a Soviet republic and emigrated to the U.S. with his family.  Many Trumpers have questioned his patriotism, saying his concern for Ukrainian security betrayed a greater loyalty to his homeland than to his adopted country, a charge normally hurled against blacks for their advocacy for Africa or Hispanics for their concerns about Latin America.

There are two things wrong with that theory.  First of all, Colonel Vindman was three years old when his family emigrated to America.  Second, Colonel Vindman is Jewish.  European Jewish immigrants have no loyalty to their homelands because their homelands had no loyalty to them.  Jews in European countries recognize that they're not Germans, Poles, Russians, Ukrainians or anything like tht . . . they're Israelites who happen to live in one of those countries.  The pogroms and the Shoah made that painfully clear.  I don't now anything about Colonel Vindman's family, but I'll guess that anti-Semitism had as much to do with their departure from Ukraine as Soviet oppression.  Jews come to America because they feel safer here than anywhere else . . . and these nasty comments about the good colonel occurred almost a year to the day after the horrific synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh. 

Trump supporters will stoop as low as possible to defend their guy.  Even Republicans like Liz Cheney found this attack on Colonel Vindman disgraceful.  Impeachment - and even removal from office - for Trump both just became more likely.