Alex Vindman Survived Trump’s Retaliation Machine. Now He’s Running for Senate

Alex Vindman knows a thing or two about pissing off President Donald Trump.

In 2019, Vindman rose to national prominence when he served as a witness during Trump’s first impeachment trial. If you’ve lost track of that particular scandal, it’s the one involving Trump, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, the Biden family … and Vindman listening in on a troubling phone call in his capacity as the director for European affairs on the National Security Council. Vindman’s congressional testimony describing that pivotal call was widely lauded, even as it ended his storied military career: After being ousted from the NSC, Vindman retired from the Army in 2020.

Six years later, he’s got his eye on another governmental gig. In January, Vindman announced plans to challenge Republican incumbent Ashley Moody for the Florida seat in the US Senate previously held by Marco Rubio. Vindman, who tells me he moved to Florida in 2023 because his wife wanted to escape politics, is the latest candidate I’m chatting with ahead of the November midterms. He’s particularly interesting to me, and WIRED, for a few reasons: Vindman has lived through—and emerged from—the Trump retaliation machine, and I wanted to hear more about that journey; he’s been vocal about his opposition to both the war in Iran and ICE, two topics we cover frequently; and I wanted his view, as a longtime service member, on AI through the lens of national security.

Then there’s the fact that Vindman, running in what’s ostensibly a Republican stronghold, has a decent shot at winning the damn thing: Though Senator Moody still leads in most polls, Vindman is often within spitting distance—no small feat for a first-time candidate whose campaign started around five months ago.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

KATIE DRUMMOND: Welcome to the Big Interview, Alex.

ALEX VINDMAN: Thanks. Good to be here with you, Katie.

So glad to have you here. You are maybe best known on a national level as a whistleblower, but you were also an Army veteran of more than 20 years. You were honored with a Purple Heart after being wounded in Iraq, and you were on the National Security Council.

I'm curious if you feel like your role in the first impeachment trial of President Trump overshadows your work and your career. What would you like to be best known for?

I thought you were gonna say that I was best known for my appearance on Curb Your Enthusiasm. A lot of folks seem to recognize me from there.

Certainly the public knows me from [the impeachment] context. I didn't necessarily recognize the impact. I was sitting, testifying in front of Congress. I was the focus of the story, but I wasn't really a part of that story.

I was just doing my job. But behind the scenes, a lot of folks knew me for having a pretty exceptional military career. My family came to the US in 1979. I was 4 years old. We were Jewish refugees that fled from the Soviet Union. Dad landed in the US at the age of 47, hauled furniture to be able to provide for us boys. It was my older brother, my twin brother, a grandmother he didn't get along with. He was a primary caregiver because my mother passed away.

I worked my way up through there. Combat tours in Iraq, duty, representing this nation in embassies in Kyiv, Ukraine, Moscow, Russia, Pentagon service—why I wrote the book on Russia—then the White House and the National Security Council. But the public obviously saw just a small sliver, a small snapshot of an army officer who was willing to speak up and do the right thing and damn the consequences, because that's what I was trained to do.

If that's all they know about me, if they know that I'm a fighter for what's right, that I will call balls and strikes regardless of where the fault lies, then that's OK. That's not a bad place to be.

I want to go back in time a little bit, because this was several years ago; at that impeachment trial you testified before Congress about a pivotal phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.

This was back in 2019, and this is the call wherein Trump appears to pressure Zelensky to investigate the Bidens. There have been dozens and dozens, if not hundreds, of scandals at the feet of President Trump. Tell me what you found so troubling about that call and why you felt compelled to come forward at that moment?

I'd been serving on the National Security Council. Russia and Ukraine were already five years into a war, and what I'd witnessed was a scheme that would've undermined US national security, that looked like it was inspiring Russia to be even more aggressive.

That's the way I perceived it, and that's the fact that materialized just a few years later with a full-scale war in 2022. I also witnessed what I thought was an effort to steal an election, and it was not something that I could sit idly by for. It was squarely in my area of responsibility.

I had this large portfolio in a position of enormous responsibility, and I just did what I thought was right. It's the same thing that I had trained my soldiers to do along the way: Don't walk by a mistake. If you see something wrong, you've gotta say something. You could make those corrections even if it's up the chain of command, as long as you do it respectfully and that your intent is to make sure that you're delivering on the mission. For me, it was US national security.

I don't look backwards, and I don’t have any regrets. I think I modeled what I thought was good behavior for my fellow service members, for my daughter, who at the time was 8 years old. That chapter ended almost 22 years of military service.

I'm opening up a new chapter of service. After being forced out of the military, my wife was looking for a place to move to, to get away from politics, so we moved to Florida.

You moved to Florida, a stronghold for the president.

That's true, but it was also a good place for us.

My best friend from my very first assignment in the military married a local in South Florida outside of Fort Lauderdale. We'd been going there for years. We had a natural network. We needed a better environment to raise our family, and it turned out to be an ideal setting for us. Just a few months after we got there, I convinced my dad, a New Yorker, to move down, and he's 10 minutes away from me, and we're trying to live that wonderful Florida lifestyle, but watching things slip away because it's getting too expensive.

Corruption is driving up costs. It is becoming increasingly unaffordable for folks on fixed income to survive in Florida. My daughter, who is 15 years old, a ninth grader, she's got three years left. I want her to stay next to dad. I'm trying to make sure that we build a Florida that's welcoming to young women, that it is a place that's affordable for young folks, whether they go into trades or university, so that they could settle there and afford to have a good quality of life. A place where there are jobs. Unemployment in Florida is surging because of the decisions being made by this administration and Ashley Moody, my opponent, who was appointed to that role.

You spent more than two decades serving in the US military. You testified in this impeachment trial. Anyone who speaks out against President Trump or takes that very public posture—I mean, you're up against harassment, death threats.

You really went through the wringer. Your wife wanted to get away from politics. You moved to Florida. Why run?

It wasn't necessarily the easiest decision. My heart's been in public service my entire professional life. Served this country in postings around the world in combat, was wounded by a roadside bomb and earned a Purple Heart and witnessed the costs of poor decisions and what that means with regards to loss of our true treasure, our troops, squandering of billions of dollars in resources sounds very similar to what's going on today.

**I have to ask about how you're lo