Donald Trump’s Friday night middle-finger to his critics

Freed from the yoke of impeachment, President Donald Trump did what he does best on Friday night: Exacted revenge on his enemies.

In this case, his “enemies” were a decorated military veteran and longtime national security staffer named Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, and Gordon Sondland, a major donor to the President’s inaugural committee who was rewarded for that contribution with an ambassadorship.

Trump unceremoniously fired both men just 48 hours after he had been acquitted by the Republican-controlled Senate on both articles that the Democratic majority in the House had impeached him on in December 2019.

Their crime? Disloyalty, in the eyes of Trump. Both Vindman, a member of the National Security Council, and Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union, had testified under subpoena in the House impeachment inquiry. And both men had made clear they had concerns about the way in which Trump acted in his interactions with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — specifically during a July 25, 2019, phone call between the two men. (Vindman’s twin brother, Yevgeny, was also dismissed Friday, although he played no role in the Ukraine investigations.)

Vindman testified to House investigators that he was immediately concerned with what seemed, from his perspective, to be Trump seeking to use the power of the presidency, and the potential promise of a White House visit for Zelensky, to pressure the Ukrainians to announce an investigation into former vice president and 2020 candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. Vindman testified that he alerted his superiors to his concern soon after the call ended.

(Trump’s attempts to pressure Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden and Joe Biden, his potential 2020 general election rival, are at the center of the President’s impeachment trial. Trump and his allies have repeatedly made unfounded and false claims to allege that the Bidens acted corruptly in Ukraine.)

Sondland wound up being, somewhat unexpectedly, the star witness for House Democrats — acknowledging under oath that not only was there a quid pro quo (an announcement of an investigation in exchange for a White House visit) but that “everyone was in the loop … it was no secret.”

The Friday night firings of Sondland and Vindman are the latest in a series of departures from the administration of those who testified in the House hearings — from special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker, who resigned shortly after the House announced a series of investigations into the Ukraine situation in September, to Jennifer Williams, special adviser to Vice President Mike Pence, who left her role at the end of January — several months short of her planned departure.

The removals of Vindman and Sondland are, however, the most transparent efforts at retribution from Trump, who had fumed privately for months that they had testified against him.

Earlier on Friday, Trump was asked about the whispers that Vindman was on the verge of being removed. He all but confirmed the firing would happen — and left little doubt as to why.

“Well, I’m not happy with him,” Trump said. “You think I’m supposed to be happy with him? I’m not.”

What the Friday firings amounted to was Trump flipping the bird to anyone and everyone — Democrats, the media, the national security establishment — who he believed had wrongly persecuted him over his first three years in office, especially throughout the impeachment process.

Seen in hindsight, the firings amounted to a bookend of Trump’s “celebration” speech at the White House on Thursday, where, with a rapt and pliant GOP audience, the President attacked the “evil” and “corrupt” people who “want to destroy our country” by opposing him. That included the likes of Republican Sen. Mitt Romney, who voted with Democrats on one of the articles, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In his victory-lap speech, Trump accused both of hiding behind their religion to do things they knew were wrong and referring to the leaders of the FBI as the “top scum.”

What the two moments — separated by fewer than 36 hours — made clear is that this President will be neither chastened nor cowed by entering the history books as only the third president ever to be impeached by the House. (Trump is also the third president to be acquitted in a Senate trial — although he is the first to ever have a member of his own party vote for his removal.)

Trump not only proclaimed victory but also sought to pay back those who, by testifying honestly, he saw as having betrayed him. It was an utterly Trumpian set of decisions designed to buoy his most ardent supporters, inflame his opponents and remind everyone that this President never forgets — and always pays his (perceived) debts.