Fox Business host and informal Trump adviser Lou Dobbs sent a “be more loyal to Trump or else” message when he attacked Secretary of Defense Mark Esper for not helping Donald Trump retaliate against Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman after he testified in the Trump impeachment inquiry.
Clearly, Dobbs was sending a message to both Esper and Fan-in-Chief Trump Friday night with ominously authoritarian comments. As Suzie Madrak explained at Crooks and Liars (where I am a contributor), Dobbs’ beef was that Esper “dared to give Lt. Col Alexander Vindman and his brother jobs after they were purged by Trump in his post-impeachment retribution.” Or, as Dobbs put it, Esper gave Vindman "a soft place to land."
What would Dobbs have preferred? That Esper made sure Vindman never works again? Locked him up? There seems to be no bottom to the anti-democratic viciousness of the Trump crowd.
Dobbs played a clip of Esper saying, “We protect all of our servicemembers from retribution or anything like that,” then called Esper's words “nonsense.” Not that Dobbs has any standing attacking military policy. As Madrak pointed out, he never spent a moment putting his own MAGA fanny on the line for his country. Lt. Col. Vindman, on the other hand, not only served but earned a Purple Heart after being wounded in Iraq.
DOBBS: Just where the hell did Esper come up with this suggested threat of any kind of retaliation?"This guy is a beauty. During his confirmation hearing last July, Esper said his views are more aligned with Jim Mattis than those of the president or better yet, the commander in chief. Esper has also contradicted the president on possible targets in Iran of Qassem Soleimani’s threats against our embassies when he was taken out.
I mean, this guy is really – he’s in need of serious, serious reality checks and he should remember that there is a chain of command, particularly since he’s in the Defense Department and had better start saluting from time to time rather than contradicting the commander in chief in my humble opinion.
You can watch Dobbs’ phony patriotism and genuine fascism below, from the Fox Business Network’s February 7, 2020 Lou Dobbs Tonight, via Crooks and Liars.
When I think back to the Shrub’s worst of the worst, it was only a dozen or so (as far as I know) at the heart of darkness. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, maybe half a dozen more from the cray-cray PNAC gang, Rove and a few lesser lights. This time round there must be many hundreds of villains who will need severe punishment once the madness has past.
