Latest news with #Gitmo
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
OAN Pentagon Reporter and Self-Styled ‘MAGA Girl' Says She Was Fired for Criticizing Pete Hegseth's Press Restrictions
OAN chief Pentagon correspondent and former Trump White House staffer Gabrielle Cuccia, who describes herself as a 'MAGA girl,' says she was fired from the unabashedly conservative cable news network for criticizing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's restrictions on the press. Cuccia was hired by OAN after the network took over NBC's former Pentagon workspace, and soon raised concerns about the Defense Department's increasing limitations on journalists, including locked briefing room doors and a lack of formal press briefings. 'If you want the best case study for the death of the MAGA movement — look no further than the Department of Defense,' Cuccia wrote on her Substack. 'If there's any place where we should be asking questions, demanding transparency, and applying pressure — it's here.' Not long after, Cuccia was seen clearing out her workspace and later confirmed her termination, which was first reported by CNN's Reliable Sources. Cuccia called the current restrictions the 'antithesis' of MAGA values, which she describes as questioning government authority first and foremost. 'This Administration, to my surprise, also locked the doors to the Pentagon Briefing room, a protocol that was never in place in prior Administrations, and a door that is never locked for press at the White House,' Cuccia wrote. Trump 'welcomes the hard questions … and yes, even the dumb ones. Why won't the Secretary of Defense do the same?' OAN did not comment on her firing to CNN. Cuccia says among other things, the new policies mean it's no longer possible to approach defense officials for off-the-record conversations, as media 'escorts' are the only way to freely move about areas of the Pentagon that have traditionally been open to journalists. She also said the DOD requested her questions for Hegseth – in his only press briefing so far – in advance. 'At first I thought nothing of it and figured they wanted to be prepared for their very first briefing and be able to answer questions with as much info in response as possible,' she wrote. 'Unfortunately that was not the case and they responded by telling me to field my question about CECOT/Gitmo to the Department of State suggesting it wasn't within the DoD's purview — just days later, the SecDef did a trip to Gitmo.' Cuccia said she's still a 'MAGA girl' and has nothing against Hegseth per se – but apparently that wasn't enough for OAN to keep her onboard. 'This article isn't to serve as a tearing down of the SecDef,' she concluded. 'This is me wanting to keep MAGA alive. Ask questions, debate, and stay vigilant – even when it is someone on the right side of the aisle.' The post OAN Pentagon Reporter and Self-Styled 'MAGA Girl' Says She Was Fired for Criticizing Pete Hegseth's Press Restrictions appeared first on TheWrap.
Sky News
27-04-2025
- Politics
- Sky News
Trump faces awkward reckoning 100 days into the job - notwithstanding his dreams of being King of America
David Axelrod, Barack Obama's chief strategist, tried to downplay interest in the president's first "100 days". He said it is just a "hallmark holiday", meaning that the date is of little interest to those who make a point of remembering milestones such as greeting card manufacturers. That did not prevent a reluctant Obama from having to join the media in assessing what he had achieved in his first few months in the White House. He used early 2009 to reboot the American economy after the credit crunch and to promote social issues such as equal pay, healthcare for children and gender rights. He also ordered the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. But "Gitmo" never shut. On returning to office this year, Donald Trump ordered its expansion to accommodate migrants arrested in the US. Many of this president's executive orders aim to reverse the spirit of what Obama and his Democratic successor, Joe Biden, tried to do. Rather than a greeting card, the assessment at one hundred days has become an important report card for US presidents. That's why Sky News is carrying on with the TRUMP100 podcast by its US correspondents and why I was sent in 2008/9 to cover the first hundred days of Barack Obama, America's first black president. 👉 Follow Trump 100 on your podcast app 👈 Donald Trump is keen to celebrate his first 14 and a half weeks back in office. He is planning to hold his first MAGA rally since the election in one of the key swing states which helped him to victory. "President Trump is excited to return to the great state of Michigan next Tuesday, where he will rally in Macomb County to celebrate the FIRST 100 DAYS!" his press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced in capital letters on social media. There is something magic about 100, 10 x 10, the first number in three figures. In politics, "100 days" has assumed a talismanic status, defining both good and bad fortune for those it encompasses. The phrase was coined in French in 1815 by the Comte de Chabrol de Volvic as a polite euphemism when he welcomed the restoration of Louis VIII following Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte's attempt to take back power. 16:55 Les Cents Jours - Hundred Days - covered the period from Napoleon's arrival in Paris after his escape from exile on the island of Elba, through the military campaign which culminated in his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June, to the King's return to the capital on 8 July. Since then, many books have been written entitled The Hundred Days, which has come to symbolise sometimes deluded heroism. The novelist Patrick O'Brien used it as the title for one of his "Master and Commander" books covering the activities of his British Navy Captain Jack Aubrey during Napoleon's final campaign. Admiral Sir Sandy Woodward, the commander of the Falkland Islands' Task Force in 1982, called his memoirs of that UK triumph One Hundred Days. In American politics, the one hundred days report card began with the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933. The Democrat FDR hit the ground running, like Obama, to turn round economic catastrophe. In one of the first "fireside chats" on the radio, which he innovated, he reported back on "the crowding events of the hundred days which had been devoted to the starting of the wheels of the New Deal". Ninety years later, the British cabinet minister James Purnell began Leading A Government Department - the First 100 Days, a report he co-wrote for the Institute for Government, by quoting the presidential historian Godfrey Hodgson on FDR's start. "These were the famous 'hundred days', in the course of which Roosevelt saved American capitalism and - some would say - saved American democracy as well," he wrote. "The period set a standard by which the wisdom and effectiveness of future presidents was to be judged." By the yardsticks on democracy and the economy, the 47th President of the United States faces an awkward reckoning 100 days into the job. The S&P 500 stock index is down more than 15% under Trump, and the IMF has revised down global growth forecasts due to his tariff policy. His critics accuse Trump of undermining America's democratic norms. He has exploited his position for personal profit, directed the federal justice system to persecute his opponents, pardoned the January 6th US Capitol insurrectionists, unleashed the unelected Elon Musk to slash the federal government through his unofficial Department of Government Efficiency, and launched the "Trump 2028" campaign to stand for a third term as president, in defiance of the US Constitution. Trump resumed the presidency determined not to be held back as he was in his first term. He started signing executive orders within hours of being sworn in. So far, he has issued 124, more than half the 220 he got through in the full four years between 2017 and 2021. Some of these orders may be rejected in the courts. But Trump has also been helped by a supine US Congress, where his Republican Party has control of both Houses. This is in marked contrast to the resistance from lawmakers that Obama faced from his first day. Doug Sosnik, who was President Clinton's White House policy director, wrote in the New York Times last week: "It is safe to say that the first 100 days of Donald Trump's second presidency will be considered the most consequential of any in modern history. "Since taking office, Mr Trump has consolidated extraordinary power in the executive branch, dismantled large portions of the federal government, undone the military and economic alliances that were formed following World War Two and torn up the policy consensus that has governed global trade for just as long." Trump's notable failures have been in foreign policy. He did not bring peace to Ukraine on "day one". Israel's war with Hamas in Gaza continues. 0:54 Threats to make Canada"the 51st State" have transformed the anti-Trump Liberal Mark Carney into the favourite to win this weekend's election. His aim to "get Greenland one way or another" has alienated Greenland, Denmark and their allies and made no progress. Trump will doubtless outline his achievements and his further ambitions at his 100-day rally in Michigan. His envoys are desperately trying to strong-arm Ukraine into a peace "deal" before then. Obama waited several months before commenting that "the first hundred days is going to be important, but it's probably going to be the first thousand days that makes the difference". Next Tuesday, Trump will still have 1,360 days left to serve legally, notwithstanding his dreams of crowning himself King of America for life.
Yahoo
29-01-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
You're So Vain, You Probably Think Kash Patel Hates You
These days in Washington, D.C., among a class of Extremely Beltway types—the name droppers, the strivers, the media gossips—Donald Trump's threats to exact revenge on his enemies have turned into a highly specific (and highly absurd) status competition. Olivia Troye has heard the joke so many times that she already has a well-worn comeback prepared. When nervous journalists and teasing D.C. types crack to Troye—a lifelong Republican who served as former Vice President Mike Pence's homeland-security adviser before becoming an outspoken Trump critic—that they might end up in adjoining Guantánamo Bay cells, she responds: 'I had the Gitmo portfolio, so I can give you some tips.' In a moment of deep uncertainty in the nation's capital, where Trump took office promising vengeance but where the scope of his intentions remains nebulous, many of Trump's known critics have unofficially divided into two adjacent camps: those, like Troye, who have real reason to be alarmed by the president's threats and are quietly taking steps to protect themselves and their family, and those who are loudly—and often facetiously—chattering about how Trump and his posse might throw them in a gulag. (There are also those in Trump's orbit who are joking, one hopes, about whom they might throw in the hypothetical gulag.) Whereas many of those branded most prominently with the scarlet R of Resistance are now eager to stay out of Trump's sight line, other figures in Washington are actively self-identifying as could-be Trump targets, in a very D.C. show of importance. And often the people talking openly about getting thrown in a gulag likely aren't even important enough for the gulag. At one of the many swanky parties in the run-up to Trump's second inauguration, a White House reporter confessed to me that during a recent meeting in outgoing White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients's office, the reporter had—mainly in jest—asked to get on the list for a preemptive pardon. In his final The Late Show episode during the Biden administration, Stephen Colbert also played with the gag, telling his audience, 'The next time you all see me, Donald Trump will be president. And you may not see me! Next four years—next four years, we're taking this one day at a time.' If the classic 'D.C. read' is scanning a book's index for one's own name and frantically flipping to the listed pages, then even a mention in Appendix B ('Executive Branch Deep State') of Government Gangsters, written by Trump's pick for FBI chief, Kash Patel, can serve as a status symbol in certain circles. [Read: The sound of fear on air] 'For a lot of people, it's a joke that is a thinly disguised flex—it's joking about how important you are,' Tommy Vietor, a co-host of Pod Save America who has been on the receiving end of such jokes many times, told me. 'It's sort of become a standard greeting in a lot of circles: 'See you in the gulags.' 'I hope we get the nice gulag.'' 'Then every once in a while,' he added, 'someone makes that joke to someone who is actually scared or has hired a lawyer, and it's not so funny.' Tim Miller, a former Republican turned ardent Trump critic who writes for The Bulwark, told me that he not only regularly hears the joke but also sometimes finds himself 'reflexively making it,' the way remarking on the weather is an almost involuntary conversational crutch. 'And then after I do, just clarifying that I don't actually think I'm going to the gulag and that there are people who are at real risk from this administration, and we should probably focus on that,' he said. On Inauguration Day, President Joe Biden issued a handful of preemptive pardons that included five members of his family, lawmakers on the January 6 House committee, and people Trump had threatened, including Anthony Fauci, the nation's top public-health expert during the coronavirus pandemic, and retired General Mark Milley, whom Trump floated the idea of executing after The Atlantic published a profile of him. Others who have attracted Trump's ire have both publicly and privately lamented that they were not on Biden's pardon list. Rachel Vindman, the wife of Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman—who testified before Congress about a 2019 call between Trump and the Ukrainian president during which Trump asked him to investigate Biden's son Hunter—posted on social media after Biden's pardons emerged, 'Whatever happens to my family, know this: No pardons were offered or discussed. I cannot begin to describe the level of betrayal and hurt I feel.' Her husband appears in Patel's appendix. [Read: In praise of mercy] In the early weeks of his second presidency, Trump has spoken ambiguously about plans to punish his perceived enemies, though he has already taken steps to root out those in the government he believes are part of the anti-Trump 'deep state.' In some ways, the list in Patel's book is instructive. The appendix mentions prominent figures whom Trump has already put on notice or begun targeting: Biden ('the funny thing—maybe the sad thing,' Trump noted in his first post-inauguration interview, with the Fox News host Sean Hannity, is that Biden failed to pardon himself); Trump's former national security adviser John Bolton (within hours of taking office, Trump pulled U.S. Secret Service protection from Bolton, who faces threats on his life from Iran); and Fauci (last week Trump also terminated Fauci's security detail). Yet the list also mentions people such as Elizabeth Dibble and Nellie Ohr, alleged deep staters who are hardly household names and whose alleged offenses are too complicated and obscure to quickly explain. Patel also previously shared on social media a meme that featured him wielding a chainsaw and buzzing off chunks of a log emblazoned with images of alleged enemies, ranging from 'Fake News,' CNN, and MSNBC to people such as Biden, the former Republican lawmaker Liz Cheney, and Representative Nancy Pelosi, the former Democratic House speaker. Just before Election Day, the longtime Trump fundraiser Caroline Wren shared an X post from an Arizona reporter, writing, 'He should be the first journalist sent to the gulag.' She later said she was joking. Mike Davis, one of Trump's most vocal outside legal defenders, has led the unofficial social-media brigade threatening to toss reporters and other perceived enemies into the 'gulag,' statements he described to The Washington Post as a 'troll' to nettle the left. But now that Trump, back in the Oval Office, continues to display a willingness to punish those who have crossed him, this sort of declaration from Trump allies can take on a more menacing edge. On Inauguration Day, Davis unleashed more than a dozen posts on X that, depending on the perspective, could be read as trolls or threats. 'Dear Congress: We need a supplemental to feed the Vindmans in federal prison,' he wrote in one. 'Dear Tony Fauci: Roll the dice. Decline the pardon. And see what happens,' read another. And in a third, using a format he repeated for many of Trump's enemies, he addressed Biden's former Homeland Security secretary by name, writing, 'Dear Alejandro Mayorkas: No pardons for you and your staff?' 'Nobody is above the law,' Davis said, when I called to ask him about his public posts. 'If they've done nothing wrong, they have nothing to worry about, and if they've done nothing wrong, why did they need a pardon?' Some of those squarely in the sights of Trump and his allies have begun taking steps to protect themselves. Troye, for instance, has retained a lawyer, and recently made sure that she and her family members had up-to-date passports. Rachel Vindman, meanwhile, told me that she and her family moved from Virginia to Florida two years ago—uprooting their daughter in the middle of sixth grade—in part because they 'wanted to live somewhere a little bit more anonymous.' (She was also, she added, ready to leave the D.C. bubble and eager for a 'fresh start.') [Read: Trump's first shot in his war on the 'deep state'] In many ways, the fear that the mere prospect of retribution has struck in Trump's opponents—prompting them to hire personal security or nervously bluster about the gulags—could be victory enough for MAGA world. After winning reelection, Trump posted on social media a list of out-of-favor individuals and groups—including 'Americans for No Prosperity,' 'Dumb as a Rock' John Bolton, and Pence, his former vice president—and said that prospective administration hires should not bother applying if they had worked with or were endorsed by anyone on the list. 'That's the financial gulag,' one person told me, speaking anonymously because he has worked for three of the people or entities on Trump's list, and doesn't want his business to be blackballed. 'It's not quite a gulag, but it does have a chilling effect.' Similarly, those who did not receive pardons from Biden worry about the financially daunting task of protecting themselves. 'Did you not think of the people who are about to get destroyed, who defend themselves, who have no congressional coverage, who are not politicians, who are not millionaires, who don't have dozens of PACs that are protecting them?' Troye asked. 'There are people who worked on government salaries.' (A Biden spokesperson declined to comment on Biden's relatively selective set of pardons.) Vindman, who lived in Russia for several years, said that although no one knows exactly what to expect in Trump's second term, her experience in Moscow might offer a glimpse: Colleagues policed themselves, and other Russians proactively took actions they believed would please Russian President Vladimir Putin. 'It was never a direct ask,' she told me. 'It was a more tacit thing.' [Read: Trump targets his own government] Vindman, who has friends who regularly check in on her, said she spent Election Night wide awake. Her husband was in Virginia with his twin brother, Eugene Vindman, a Democrat the state's suburban voters elected to the House, and the task of telling her daughter that Trump had won fell to her. 'The hardest part of that was laying in bed awake, worrying,' she said. 'She's in eighth grade, and maybe the last four years of her with us will be marred by that, by this harassment.' When, over the Thanksgiving holiday, Trump's close ally Elon Musk accused Alexander Vindman of 'treason,' warning that 'he will pay the appropriate penalty,' Rachel Vindman told me that her immediate concern was for her in-laws and her 98-year-old grandmother, who heard the comment and worried on her family's behalf. But personally, Vindman said she is working to find daily joy and maintain a sense of normalcy for herself and her family. Her husband recently turned his masters thesis into a book, The Folly of Realism, coming out at the end of February. When I asked her if she ever considered urging him not to publish, because it would thrust their family back into public view, she was emphatic: 'Do you just say no to it because it might anger them or put you in the spotlight?' she asked. 'It's that kind of quiet defiance of living your life.' 'It could be a mistake. I guess we'll never know.' She paused, then added, 'Well, I guess we will know.' Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
29-01-2025
- Politics
- Atlantic
You're So Vain, You Probably Think Kash Patel Hates You
These days in Washington, D.C., among a class of Extremely Beltway types—the name droppers, the strivers, the media gossips—Donald Trump's threats to exact revenge on his enemies have turned into a highly specific (and highly absurd) status competition. Olivia Troye has heard the joke so many times that she already has a well-worn comeback prepared. When nervous journalists and teasing D.C. types crack to Troye—a lifelong Republican who served as former Vice President Mike Pence's homeland-security adviser before becoming an outspoken Trump critic—that they might end up in adjoining Guantánamo Bay cells, she responds: 'I had the Gitmo portfolio, so I can give you some tips.' In a moment of deep uncertainty in the nation's capital, where Trump took office promising vengeance but where the scope of his intentions remains nebulous, many of Trump's known critics have unofficially divided into two adjacent camps: those, like Troye, who have real reason to be alarmed by the president's threats and are quietly taking steps to protect themselves and their family, and those who are loudly—and often facetiously—chattering about how Trump and his posse might throw them in a gulag. (There are also those in Trump's orbit who are joking, one hopes, about whom they might throw in the hypothetical gulag.) Whereas many of those branded most prominently with the scarlet R of Resistance are now eager to stay out of Trump's sight line, other figures in Washington are actively self-identifying as could-be Trump targets, in a very D.C. show of importance. And often the people talking openly about getting thrown in a gulag likely aren't even important enough for the gulag. At one of the many swanky parties in the run-up to Trump's second inauguration, a White House reporter confessed to me that during a recent meeting in outgoing White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients's office, the reporter had—mainly in jest—asked to get on the list for a preemptive pardon. In his final The Late Show episode during the Biden administration, Stephen Colbert also played with the gag, telling his audience, 'The next time you all see me, Donald Trump will be president. And you may not see me! Next four years—next four years, we're taking this one day at a time.' If the classic 'D.C. read' is scanning a book's index for one's own name and frantically flipping to the listed pages, then even a mention in Appendix B ('Executive Branch Deep State') of Government Gangsters, written by Trump's pick for FBI chief, Kash Patel, can serve as a status symbol in certain circles. 'For a lot of people, it's a joke that is a thinly disguised flex—it's joking about how important you are,' Tommy Vietor, a co-host of Pod Save America who has been on the receiving end of such jokes many times, told me. 'It's sort of become a standard greeting in a lot of circles: 'See you in the gulags.' 'I hope we get the nice gulag.'' 'Then every once in a while,' he added, 'someone makes that joke to someone who is actually scared or has hired a lawyer, and it's not so funny.' Tim Miller, a former Republican turned ardent Trump critic who writes for The Bulwark, told me that he not only regularly hears the joke but also sometimes finds himself 'reflexively making it,' the way remarking on the weather is an almost involuntary conversational crutch. 'And then after I do, just clarifying that I don't actually think I'm going to the gulag and that there are people who are at real risk from this administration, and we should probably focus on that,' he said. On Inauguration Day, President Joe Biden issued a handful of preemptive pardons that included five members of his family, lawmakers on the January 6 House committee, and people Trump had threatened, including Anthony Fauci, the nation's top public-health expert during the coronavirus pandemic, and retired General Mark Milley, whom Trump floated the idea of executing after The Atlantic published a profile of him. Others who have attracted Trump's ire have both publicly and privately lamented that they were not on Biden's pardon list. Rachel Vindman, the wife of Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman—who testified before Congress about a 2019 call between Trump and the Ukrainian president during which Trump asked him to investigate Biden's son Hunter— posted on social media after Biden's pardons emerged, 'Whatever happens to my family, know this: No pardons were offered or discussed. I cannot begin to describe the level of betrayal and hurt I feel.' Her husband appears in Patel's appendix. In the early weeks of his second presidency, Trump has spoken ambiguously about plans to punish his perceived enemies, though he has already taken steps to root out those in the government he believes are part of the anti-Trump 'deep state.' In some ways, the list in Patel's book is instructive. The appendix mentions prominent figures whom Trump has already put on notice or begun targeting: Biden ('the funny thing—maybe the sad thing,' Trump noted in his first post-inauguration interview, with the Fox News host Sean Hannity, is that Biden failed to pardon himself); Trump's former national security adviser John Bolton (within hours of taking office, Trump pulled U.S. Secret Service protection from Bolton, who faces threats on his life from Iran); and Fauci (last week Trump also terminated Fauci's security detail). Yet the list also mentions people such as Elizabeth Dibble and Nellie Ohr, alleged deep staters who are hardly household names and whose alleged offenses are too complicated and obscure to quickly explain. Patel also previously shared on social media a meme that featured him wielding a chainsaw and buzzing off chunks of a log emblazoned with images of alleged enemies, ranging from 'Fake News,' CNN, and MSNBC to people such as Biden, the former Republican lawmaker Liz Cheney, and Representative Nancy Pelosi, the former Democratic House speaker. Just before Election Day, the longtime Trump fundraiser Caroline Wren shared an X post from an Arizona reporter, writing, 'He should be the first journalist sent to the gulag.' She later said she was joking. Mike Davis, one of Trump's most vocal outside legal defenders, has led the unofficial social-media brigade threatening to toss reporters and other perceived enemies into the 'gulag,' statements he described to The Washington Post as a 'troll' to nettle the left. But now that Trump, back in the Oval Office, continues to display a willingness to punish those who have crossed him, this sort of declaration from Trump allies can take on a more menacing edge. On Inauguration Day, Davis unleashed more than a dozen posts on X that, depending on the perspective, could be read as trolls or threats. 'Dear Congress: We need a supplemental to feed the Vindmans in federal prison,' he wrote in one. 'Dear Tony Fauci: Roll the dice. Decline the pardon. And see what happens,' read another. And in a third, using a format he repeated for many of Trump's enemies, he addressed Biden's former Homeland Security secretary by name, writing, 'Dear Alejandro Mayorkas: No pardons for you and your staff?' 'Nobody is above the law,' Davis said, when I called to ask him about his public posts. 'If they've done nothing wrong, they have nothing to worry about, and if they've done nothing wrong, why did they need a pardon?' Some of those squarely in the sights of Trump and his allies have begun taking steps to protect themselves. Troye, for instance, has retained a lawyer, and recently made sure that she and her family members had up-to-date passports. Rachel Vindman, meanwhile, told me that she and her family moved from Virginia to Florida two years ago—uprooting their daughter in the middle of sixth grade—in part because they 'wanted to live somewhere a little bit more anonymous.' (She was also, she added, ready to leave the D.C. bubble and eager for a 'fresh start.') In many ways, the fear that the mere prospect of retribution has struck in Trump's opponents—prompting them to hire personal security or nervously bluster about the gulags—could be victory enough for MAGA world. After winning reelection, Trump posted on social media a list of out-of-favor individuals and groups—including 'Americans for No Prosperity,' 'Dumb as a Rock' John Bolton, and Pence, his former vice president—and said that prospective administration hires should not bother applying if they had worked with or were endorsed by anyone on the list. 'That's the financial gulag,' one person told me, speaking anonymously because he has worked for three of the people or entities on Trump's list, and doesn't want his business to be blackballed. 'It's not quite a gulag, but it does have a chilling effect.' Similarly, those who did not receive pardons from Biden worry about the financially daunting task of protecting themselves. 'Did you not think of the people who are about to get destroyed, who defend themselves, who have no congressional coverage, who are not politicians, who are not millionaires, who don't have dozens of PACs that are protecting them?' Troye asked. 'There are people who worked on government salaries.' (A Biden spokesperson declined to comment on Biden's relatively selective set of pardons.) Vindman, who lived in Russia for several years, said that although no one knows exactly what to expect in Trump's second term, her experience in Moscow might offer a glimpse: Colleagues policed themselves, and other Russians proactively took actions they believed would please Russian President Vladimir Putin. 'It was never a direct ask,' she told me. 'It was a more tacit thing.' Vindman, who has friends who regularly check in on her, said she spent Election Night wide awake. Her husband was in Virginia with his twin brother, Eugene Vindman, a Democrat the state's suburban voters elected to the House, and the task of telling her daughter that Trump had won fell to her. 'The hardest part of that was laying in bed awake, worrying,' she said. 'She's in eighth grade, and maybe the last four years of her with us will be marred by that, by this harassment.' When, over the Thanksgiving holiday, Trump's close ally Elon Musk accused Alexander Vindman of 'treason,' warning that 'he will pay the appropriate penalty,' Rachel Vindman told me that her immediate concern was for her in-laws and her 98-year-old grandmother, who heard the comment and worried on her family's behalf. But personally, Vindman said she is working to find daily joy and maintain a sense of normalcy for herself and her family. Her husband recently turned his masters thesis into a book, The Folly of Realism, coming out at the end of February. When I asked her if she ever considered urging him not to publish, because it would thrust their family back into public view, she was emphatic: 'Do you just say no to it because it might anger them or put you in the spotlight?' she asked. 'It's that kind of quiet defiance of living your life.' 'It could be a mistake. I guess we'll never know.' She paused, then added, 'Well, I guess we will know.'
