Impeachment witness says it’s ‘embarrassing’ that Trump only just found out about WWII and Napoleon

Retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel and Trump impeachment witness Alexander Vindman mocked the former president on Thursday for what he saw as the Republican’s limited historical knowledge, after Trump seemed to describe just learning about WWII history during a recent campaign stop.

At a rally in Savannah, Georgia, on Tuesday, the former president took aim at Joe Biden’s vow the U.S. will continue supporting Ukraine until it finishes fighting off the invasion from Russia.

“Biden says, ‘We will not leave until we win,’” Trump said. “What happens if they win? That’s what they do, is they fight wars. As somebody told me the other day, they beat Hitler, they beat Napoleon. That’s what they do. They fight. And it’s not pleasant.”

Vindman, who served on the National Security Council, and whose family immigrated to the U.S. from the Soviet Union, took issue with these comments.

«First, I have to address this commentary,» Vindman told CNN. «I mean, just the other day somebody told him about World War II? I mean, how preposterous is this? It is embarrassing that a former president would say, even use that kind of language, that he just learned about World War II and his false impressions of how the records of the Soviet Union performed, really at the backbone was support from the West in massive casualties that they took. But I think I would say that we would be facing a different kind of disaster. It wouldn’t be a complete collapse of the Ukrainians.»

The Soviet Union defeated Nazi Germany on the eastern front in 1945, four years after the Nazis had invaded and at the loss of tens of millions of Soviet troops and civilians.

Imperial Russia defeated a French invasion led by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1812.

Russia’s military record