Impeachment witness taunts president with vow to bring 'one thing Trump hates' to Senate

Alex Vindman is leaning into the one thing he knows gets under Donald Trump's skin: the prospect of becoming the president's own home-state senator.

In a fundraising appeal sent to supporters, the Vindman campaign made the geography the whole pitch. It pointed to Mar-a-Lago, Trump's Florida residence, and noted that the state is where Vindman is running for the U.S. Senate. "And if there's one thing Trump hates," the email read, "it's 'Vindman.'"

To prove the point, the appeal resurfaced one of Trump's own social media broadsides against him, in which the president raged that Vindman knew his 2019 call to Ukraine's president was "perfect" and accused him of staying silent about the whistleblower report. The campaign cast a strong fundraising quarter as payback. "A huge FEC report will be seen as a great rebuke to Donald Trump," it told donors. "Imagine … Alex Vindman as Donald Trump's Senator."

The needling draws on a long history. Vindman, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, was a key witness in Trump's first impeachment, testifying about the call in which Trump pressured Ukraine's president, and was pushed out of his National Security Council post after the trial. He is now running as a Democrat to unseat Republican Sen. Ashley Moody, the former state attorney general appointed to fill Marco Rubio's seat after Rubio became secretary of state.

The "Trump's senator" framing is potent for donors, but the underlying race remains an uphill climb. While Vindman's campaign has cited polls showing the contest within the margin of error, independent surveys have given Moody healthier leads, and Florida has trended firmly Republican, with no Democrat winning a Senate race there since 2012. The Cook Political Report rates the seat "Solid R." Vindman also has to clear an Aug. 18 Democratic primary first.

Still, the appeal underscores how thoroughly Vindman's campaign is built on nationalizing the race and turning his personal feud with Trump into small-dollar fuel, betting that the fantasy of representing Trump's adopted home state is worth a few dollars to Democrats itching to land a blow.

Barbra Streisand, the EGOT-winning singer and actress and a longtime Democratic megastar, is also supporting Vindman.