Video: Rep. Eugene Vindman (D-VA07) Says Trump, a “Mad King” Surrounded by “third-rate fanatics and clowns from the MAGA world,” Is Turning “American foreign policy from a force for good in the world to a force for evil”

See below for video and highlights of Rep. Eugene Vindman (D-VA07) speaking last night on MSNBC (Jen Psaki’s show), as well as this morning on the US House floor (Rep. Vindman speaks about 1 1/2 hours in, right after the odious extremist Rep. Ben Cline from VA06). According to Rep. Vindman:

• “You got to remember that the sole reason all of these people are in [Trump’s] Cabinet is not because they’re competent, capable, they have experience, they’ve ever managed anything – it’s loyalty, it’s blind loyalty. They would never be selected as manager of a McDonald’s, as opposed to a Secretary of Defense. So I think it’s laughable. And so what they’re doing is they know that their their job depends on pleasing their boss, there’s only one person that they actually have to listen to and abide and it’s Donald Trump. And it’s shameful. It’s not in accordance with our values and it’s a hard turn towards dictatorships and autocracies away from what this country has always stood for.”
• “It’s simple – he fired the Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff because he is a Black man. He fired the the director of Naval operations, she was a woman…Hegseth also fired his senior military aid, a lieutenant general who was a woman. So what they’re trying to do is they’re trying to purge folks that have quality, that achieved their positions through decades of hard work, experience, every position, and they’re replacing them with yes men and folks that will not challenge them. And the firing of the lawyers, the head lawyers, is actually in some ways the most disturbing thing, because those lawyers are tasked with interpreting the Constitution and letting…the civilian and and military leaders know that these are the lawful parameters, these are constitutional parameters, and you can’t cross this line. And he’s eliminated that. And so who is he going to bring in behind him? That’s why the question I asked was it’s not a request, may I please have this information? We have a role in Congress, an oversight role, and I am demanding that they provide answers to why they fired qualified capable individuals that are serving in apolitical roles and what are their criteria for hiring the replacements? That’s what I want to know.”

• “In this month and in this year, the Pax Americana – the rules based international order which established in the aftermath of WW2 and order that has delivered peace and prosperity to the United States. – has been brought to a dishonorable end…Trump ordered the US representative to the UN to vote with autocrats and against democracy.”
• “Pete Hegseth, the Fox Weekend television host, improbably elevated into an American Secretary of Defense, announced that NATO membership for Ukraine was off the table…that Ukraine’s return to its 2014 borders was no longer in the cards…thereby deprived Ukraine and the West of two of their most valuable bargaining chips…”
• “Donald Trump, the President of the United States, standing facts on their on their head, called Volodomyr Zelenskyy – the leader of Ukrainian democracy – quote, an unelected dictator. And incredibly, spewing another blatant falsehood, blamed Ukraine for starting the war. In this month, in perhaps the most shameful statement from an American president in the history of our Republic, Trump explained that because Russia had lost so many soldiers, it was entitled to keep some or all of its territory that it had seized in its unprovoked war of aggression.”
• “It’s bad enough that these are lies and betrayals of America’s great traditions…that these statements legitimize violations of the fundamental principle of Pax America and the UN Charter, namely the rules of the jungle no longer apply to international relations, that might does not make right, and that powerful nations cannot employ force to redraw international borders at will…”
• “But things are even worse than all that. Under the tutelage of Donald Trump, we are witnessing a fundamental transformation of American foreign policy from a force for good in the world to a force for evil. Trump is aligning American foreign policy with that of the Kremlin…the USA is now run by gangsters who want to ally with other gangsters and are using threats of disruption and violence to get their way.“
• “This time there are no such adults in the room. Trump has surrounded himself with sycophants and yes men, third-rate fanatics and clowns from the MAGA world. The guardrails are gone. Trump is free to follow his peculiar whims and unhinged instincts – indeed, he is free to act as would be a mad king. The results are plain to see…This is not the behavior of a great democratic power, the leader of the free world. It’s the behavior of a mafia state engaged in coercion and blackmail. It is impossible not to be ashamed by what is being done in the name of America…Trump is living inside a disinformation bubble…”
• “At root, Trump’s policies betray a fundamental misunderstanding of the American idea, the fact that we are a free and self-governing people, a democracy that has always been a beacon of liberty. The president and his billionaire shadow co-president have embraced a dystopian ideology based on falsehoods. The effect of their disinformation is rapidly bringing us to a crisis point where their falsehoods will crash into the reality of great power competition. If America abandons Ukraine and embraces the Kremlin, the consequences for the United States and for the world will prove ruinous.”

Exactly right on all points!