RUSH: Now, there’s one other thing that I want to get to, and I still have voluminous sound bites to get to, but it came up earlier today.

We had a question from a caller about a half hour ago, 45 minutes ago about Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. He was on the phone call, he leaves the phone call, and he goes and reports to somebody outside the chain. And this caller’s husband is military and realizes what Vindman did is way outside the chain of command, so he wanted to know who he works for.

And I do too. I made the point that in the normal chain of command Lieutenant Colonel Vindman would report to the president. Everybody there would. Everybody in the State Department, everybody in the Foreign Service reports to the president. That is who they work for, except these people do not. The people who have testified, and especially the two today, do not consider the president to be the person to whom they report.

Vindman has a chain of command, and he obeys it. But the top of it is not the president. So who is it? Who does Lieutenant Colonel Vindman work for? It is the question. Because if you answer that question, you find out how all this happened. There’s a phone call between Trump and Zelensky in July. In August, Adam Schiff is told about it by the whistleblower who is informed by somebody, we think Vindman. And then Schiff puts in motion this whole whistleblower report with the inspector general, and it takes us to where we are today.

Who does Vindman work for? Who do any of these ambassadors who have testified, who do they really work for? Who are they reporting to? To whom are they discussing these events? They are in the executive branch. That means they work for the president, whether he appointed them or not. Whether they are appointees or whether they are career, they work for the president. But these people obviously aren’t.

So Vindman’s got a chain of command, but it does not feature the president at the top. Who is at the top? Who is giving Lieutenant Colonel Vindman orders that he is following? And Vindman constantly talks about the chain of command as though it is inviolate and it’s sacred. And in his world, it is. The chain of command is the glue that keeps everything together in the military, and he’s got one, and he is following the chain.

But who’s at the top of that one? I’ll tell you what I think. It’s why his chain-of-command rhetoric actually condemns him. Now, Vindman is asserting an imaginary chain of command under which the Ukraine president is supposedly subservient to the U.S. president. Vindman claims that Trump asking the president of Ukraine for a favor is a demand. And he says it’s a demand because in his world if a superior asks you to do a favor for you, it’s a demand. You had better do it. There are no favors in the chain of command.

So in Vindman’s cockeyed world, Trump is the head of some chain of command that has the president of Ukraine as a subordinate. What the hell chain of command is this? It doesn’t exist. So he asserts, to make his testimony valid, an imaginary chain of command in which the president of Ukraine is subordinate and subservient to the U.S. president.

But he didn’t think that when Obama was president. Vindman refuses to follow the real chain of command under which Vindman is subservient to the U.S. president. The U.S. president is Vindman’s commander-in-chief. But he is not obeying orders. And he is not respecting the authority of the president of the United States. He’s got some other chain that he reports to.

In the real world, my friends, it is the president who has constitutional authority to set Ukraine policy and policy for every other nation on earth. All foreign policy is set by the president. It isn’t set by Vindman. It isn’t set by John Brennan. It isn’t set by any of these ambassadors in the interagency group. It’s not set by these people who consider themselves to be the normal channel.

It is Vindman who as Army lieutenant colonel has a constitutional duty to follow the president’s policy. But he is not. He is openly defying the president’s Ukraine policy, under the guise that the president has some authority over the president of Ukraine. The president of Ukraine has no alternative but to do what Trump wants him to do. The president of Ukraine cannot say “no” because of this imaginary chain of command.

And in Vindman’s closed-door testimony in Schiff’s basement room in the Capitol, Representative Ratcliffe got close to making the case that Vindman was insubordinate during his October 29th deposition and Vindman lawyer erupted. Now, I have the transcript here, and it runs about a page and a half, and I don’t know that even I, with the talent that I possess, could make this compelling for a page and a half.

But suffice it to say that when Ratcliffe asked this question, to who the hell do you report to? What is your chain of command? These are my words that Vindman was asked. Vindman’s lawyer erupted. “I object to that characterization. It’s pretty obvious what you’re trying to do, sir.” Ratcliffe: “Let me ask the question.” The lawyer: “I’m representing my witness here, and this is my client. For you, I mean this insinuation, if you guys want to go down this road, God be with you.” Ratcliffe: “Let me ask my question, because what I heard –” “You don’t have a jury here, sir. You don’t have the public here.” Ratcliffe: “I understand that. I’m making a record.” “Well, eventually you will, and you can do it then.” Ratcliffe: “I will.” “Right now we’re gonna object.”

So Vindman’s lawyer objected to Ratcliffe trying to elucidate who do you work for, Vindman. Who are you reporting to? Because it clearly isn’t the president. Now, in the real world, this is insubordination. In Washington it is Trump guilty of insubordination because he’s not following the usual channels. He’s not going through the usual channels of the national security apparatus, which is populated by people who are trying to sabotage, undermine, and destroy Trump.

It makes perfect sense that he would be doing an end run around them. It’s called draining the swamp. It’s called doing exactly what he was elected to do. Vindman has acted outside his chain of command and has been the witness, I think, that has affirmed this. He keeps preaching about chain of command, chain of command, chain of command, and it’s obvious he is abrogating his own because he works for the president.

He does not work for the president of Ukraine. He does not represent Ukraine interests. But if you listen to his testimony, that’s what he’s all about. He is representing the interests of Ukraine against Donald Trump. He’s supposedly telling the Ukraine president, advising the Ukraine president who to be on the lookout for, what to be on the watch for. And it’s all Trump-related stuff. This is massive insubordination. So Vindman’s got a chain of command, and he’s following it. But it’s outside the actual chain of command that he is part of.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Forest in Dallas, great to have you. Hello, sir.

CALLER: Rush, thank you for taking my call. To your point about Vindman’s sense of self-importance, what jumped out at me… I only got to listen for about an hour, but I must have heard him refer to himself as a coordinator and how he coordinates… Epecially when Jordan was questioning him, he fell right back into that. And you could just read in his words that in his mind the coordinator was the boss. And I believe he believes that. And I’m yet to work for a big company or see a big company that has chief coordinator officer. But in his mind as a bureaucrat, he’s in charge because he’s the coordinator.

RUSH: Yeah, I know what you mean. We all know people like this. They are third- and fourth-level functionaries who need to do things. And they are made to feel extremely relevant and important for making the trains run on time and so forth and they end up believing it. But Vindman’s not a policy guy, he’s an order taker. But here’s the thing about that. I don’t… Self-importance? Sometimes, folks, you need to make people feel self-important in order to get them to do the job.

I mean, employer psychology is a very intricate thing, and you need different policies for different people, and he probably perfectly fits the role. The real question again, folks, it comes down to who does he work for? Let me play you a couple sound bites to illustrate what I’m talking about. Two of Vindman here. He’s being questioned by (let’s see) Schiff, Pencil Neck. Question: “Colonel, you described this favor the president asked as a demand.

“What is it about the relationship between the president of the U.S. and the president of Ukraine, that leads to you conclude that when the president seeks a ‘favor’ like this, it’s really a demand?” Now, this all comes from the testimony that Vindman gave behind closed doors that nobody saw, because all these are leading questions. Vindman said things that they want him to repeat so they phrase questions knowing what the answer is. It’s all a set up. But, anyway, here’s how Vindman characterized this belief that the president of Ukraine is subordinate to Trump.

VINDMAN: Chairman, uh, the culture I come from, the — the military culture, um, when a senior asks you to do something, even if it’s polite and pleasant, it’s — it’s not… Um, it’s not to be taken as a request. It’s to be taken as an order. Uh, in this case, the power disparity between the two leaders, uh, my impression i-is that in order to get the White House meeting, uh, President Zelensky would have to deliver the investigations.

RUSH: Who does he work for? Who does he work for? In his chain of command, he works for Trump, but he says Trump has more power than Zelensky so he’s gotta protect Zelensky here. You don’t work for Zelensky, Lieutenant Colonel! But, furthermore, you know what? The investigations have not happened — and, you know what? Zelensky got the Oval Office visit. The Biden investigation has not happened, Lieutenant Colonel. But even despite — and that fact ought to just shut all of this down.

So here’s Trump lauding it over this little, tiny, insignificant new leader — where, in Vindman’s world, this guy reports to Trump. Trump is the chain of command, and this guy’s gotta do what Trump says or else. Well, he didn’t do what Trump wanted. He didn’t start the investigation. He still got his aid. He still got his assistance, and he still got the trip to Washington and the joint press conference with Trump, got the meeting in the Oval Office. Next question, the MSNBC lawyer, Daniel Goldman, says, “Is there a process to determine official U.S. policy?”

Now, listen to this question. “Is there a process to determine official U.S. policy?” And this answer is exactly what our caller was just citing.

VINDMAN: Yes. Uh, hat is… M-my job is to coordinate U.S. policy. So throughout the preceding year that I have been on — on staff, I had undertaken an effort to make sure we had a cohesive, coherent U.S. policy.

GOLDMAN: And as you listened to the call, did you observe whether President Trump was following the talking points based on the official U.S. policy?

VINDMAN: Counsel, uh, the — the president could choose, umm, to use the talking points or not. He’s the president. But they were not consistent with what I provided, yes.

RUSH: Well… (laughing) So what? The president, he acknowledges, can go wherever he wants on this phone call, but he didn’t use Vindman’s talking points. Are we to believe that Vindman prepared the talking points for this phone call? Is that what Vindman’s saying? “They were not consistent with what I provided”? Maybe the president doesn’t value your advice. Maybe the president didn’t think your talking points were productive. Regardless, you don’t set foreign policy.

Yet look at his answer: “My job is to coordinate U.S. policy throughout the preceding year that I had been on staff. I had undertaken an effort to make sure we had a cohesive, coherent policy.” That’s not your job, man. But these people all think that it is. They think they do foreign policy. When you strip it away, what we have here… Well, we have many things, but we have a simple jealousy and anger over the fact that Trump is going around these people and is not using their (sniveling) “valid, historical input to help make foreign policy.

“Trump is ignoring them — and for that, he’s a wicked SOB who’s got to go.” But let me give you the take-away today, folks — and I want you to remember this as you pay attention to media the rest of the day and into the night, if you do. Here is the real take-away of today. It’s that the Democrats and the media did not allow (because they did not want) a single question about the connection between Vindman and Ciaramella, the whistleblower.

These two people knew each other as Ukraine experts working at the National Security Council. Vindman was in on the call. After the call, he ran out, and he called two people. He called George Kent and somebody in the intelligence community. We are highly of the opinion that it was Ciaramella, the whistleblower.

Vindman told Ciaramella his take, his opinion of the call and of Trump’s outrageous behavior in it. All by design. Ciaramella by design runs to Schiff. Now, Vindman doesn’t want any of this known. Vindman’s lawyer does not want any of this known. They don’t want any of this testified to. They don’t want any of this documented. Because it opens all sorts of questions about the extent to which Vindman was involved in the entire whistleblower gambit.

They want Vindman portrayed as nothing but a humble, decorated military man who was outraged because of his patriotism at the actions of a discredited president and didn’t know what to do. He was so upset by what he had heard, it was so bad, he didn’t know what to do. And so he had to do something. Because he is a deeply patriotic, unquestionable military man.

They don’t want anybody knowing that he ran out of that call, relayed the events to the whistleblower who then called Schiff and started this whole process. That’s the last thing they want known about Lieutenant Colonel Vindman.

So we are left with the absurdity today of Vindman admitting talking to X. He talked to somebody and then Schiff jumped in there and said, “You’re not gonna name the whistleblower.” To which the Republicans, “How could he? You don’t even know who it is, you say, even though nobody believes you, Schiff.” Vindman confesses to talking to X who he will not identify because he might be the whistleblower? That’s what people watching this were left with.

We can’t let Vindman answer that because it might be the whistleblower he was talking to. Oh, my God. Can you imagine if that got out? Can you imagine if the reason Vindman left that call and went and reported was that he’s the guy that told the whistleblower? They can’t let that out. That blows everything to smithereens, and that blows the image they have crafted here of Vindman. That’s the take-away from today. That’s what everybody needs to know happened today.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I’m just gonna tell you, folks, if I were President Trump, I wouldn’t trust the State Department, either. These people are like squatters. They’re like squatters. They think they’re involved in a policy era long enough that it’s theirs and presidents just come and go, and they are to be either casually abided by or undermined.

This hearing today has been more about determining the extent of insubordination and mixed up priorities of a bloated, bureaucrat agency. I don’t know how you say that what Vindman did is not insubordination. Treating Donald Trump as the enemy and a danger to Ukraine and acting like Ukraine needs to be protected from Trump?

I got a couple of tweets I want to share. Sean Davis is one of the founders of The Federalist, I believe. His tweet is from this morning. “Vindman was insubordinate, ignored chain of command, leaked, and lied to Congress about not knowing who the whistleblower is, when he clearly knows because he was the whistleblower’s primary source.”

Sean Davis says he deserves to be court-martialed under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Everybody’s lying about the whistleblower. Schiff is lying about the whistleblower. It is clear everybody knows who the whistleblower is, and it is our humble opinion based on reasonable assumptions that Vindman is the informant of the whistleblower. The whistleblower’s secondhand knowledge from Vindman about the phone call. And it’s obvious Schiff and the Democrats, the media do not want that connection made today. They moved in to shut this down as quickly as they could.

Paul Sperry has tweeted: “Breaking news: NSC officials attempted to remove Alex Vindman due to security concerns but were blocked by an Obama holdover, an official in the White House who still controls human resource management inside the NSC, an African-American woman closely tied to the Obama family.”

So Paul Sperry, who is a good reporter, is tweeting that NSC officials some time ago wanted to get Vindman out of there because of security concerns but were blocked by an Obama holdover. Folks, I don’t doubt any of this. This is so filthy and dirty, what the Democrats are into here.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: One more thing. Morrison, folks, said he left Vindman off of some Trump phone calls. He didn’t trust him not to leak. It is suspected Vindman may be the person that leaked Trump’s calls to the president of Mexico and Australia.