Among all the wrong things President Trump said amid his attack on Admiral Bill McRaven, he was right about one thing: The U.S. mismanaged elements of the mission to capture or kill al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden.

Trump’s attack on McRaven was wrong and wrongheaded. A retired four-star admiral and Navy SEAL who held just about every position in the U.S. special warfare organization, McRaven is a proven patriot of the finest order. On that basis alone it was wrong for Trump to suggest, as he did to Fox News’ Chris Wallace on Sunday, that McRaven is a partisan with an agenda. It was equally wrong for Trump to blame McRaven for the delays that led to the bin Laden operation. Here we see the worst edges of Trump’s personality: his willingness to deride the character of great Americans simply because they have criticized him.