There’s no way Gen. Michael Flynn has the temperament or judgement to be Trump’s national security advisor. It’s far more frightening that Trump lacks the temperament and judgement to be president, but that’s all the more reason he needs a stable, competent person whispering in his ear. Trump is on course to be our least knowledgeable president, a man with a 20 minute attention span who tends to adopt the viewpoint of the last person he talked to. His national security advisor, whose job is to sort through the information and opinions of cabinet members and governmental agencies, then present it to the president and help him figure out how to respond to international crises needs to be an honest man capable of distinguishing fact from fiction and able to arrive at cool, rational conclusions.

Let’s ignore Flynn’s famous temper and past inflammatory statements—except to note that when he was director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, his subordinates referred to his questionable assertions as “Flynn facts”—and look at the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory which circulated during the last weeks of the presidential campaign. It was a fake news story, completely without basis. It was made up. It was a lie created to damage Hillary Clinton. And Flynn did his part to fan the conspiracy’s flames.

The “Pizzagate” lie began right after FBI Director James Comey revealed that a new batch of Clinton-related emails were found on Anthony Weiner’s computer. The “Pizzagate” lie was that some of the emails pointed to a child-trafficking ring run by Clinton and her campaign manager John Podesta out of a pizza restaurant. The story flew around the internet and may have been one of the fake news stories that influenced the outcome of the election. It should have been old news after the election, but it made headlines Sunday when a man burst into the pizza restaurant with an AR-15 rifle, looking to investigate and expose the “scandal” himself. Fortunately, he didn’t hurt anyone and is now in custody.

Before the election, the usual fake news sights made money pushing the story, and pro-Trump sites jumped in as well. It was tweeted and retweeted endlessly. One of the people who helped spread the story was Michael Flynn Jr., Gen. Flynn’s son, a manic tweeter and retweeter who never found a Clinton conspiracy theory he didn’t love. And he still won’t let the story go, even with the man who attacked the restaurant in custody and the story debunked by legitimate news sources everywhere. He tweeted Sunday night,

Until #Pizzagate proven to be false, it’ll remain a story. The left seems to forget #PodestaEmails and the many “coincidences” tied to it.

You can’t blame General Flynn for his son, of course. It’s possible the kid is just the unhinged black sheep of the family. Except he’s not. He’s the chief of staff of General Flynn’s consulting firm, and he was a member of the Trump transition team with his own .gov email until today when they decided to let him go.

But you certainly have to blame General Flynn for his November 2 tweet.

U decide – NYPD Blows Whistle on New Hillary Emails: Money Laundering, Sex Crimes w Children, etc…MUST READ! http://truepundit.com/breaking-bombshell-nypd-blows-whistle-on-new-hillary-emails-money-laundering-sex-crimes-with-children-child-exploitation-pay-to-play-perjury/ …

The article he refers to isn’t about the “Pizzagate” story, but it plays into the same sex, money and child-abuse narrative. And the tweet doesn’t stand in isolation. It’s one of a string of unsubstantiated tweets and retweets Flynn is responsible for. According to a story on Politico:

Flynn himself has used social media to promote a series of outrageous conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton, President Barack Obama and their inner circles in recent months — pushing dubious factoids at least 16 times since Aug. 9, according to a POLITICO review of his Twitter posts. Flynn, who has 106,000 Twitter followers, has used the platform to retweet accusations that Clinton is involved with child sex trafficking and has “secretly waged war” on the Catholic Church, as well as charges that Obama is a “jihadi” who “laundered” money for Muslim terrorists.

Here’s one of Gen. Flynn’s tweets:

RT #spiritcooking w/ #NeveryHillary Y #DrainTheSwamp – NYPD Ready 2 Make Arrests in Weiner Case http://bit.ly/2fjmNnM via @BreitbartNews

“#spiritcooking,” according to the Politico article, is:

a reference to a bizarre rumor alleging that Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta, took part in occult rituals in which people consume blood and other bodily fluids. That rumor, based on a wild reading of some Podesta emails that had been released by WikiLeaks, also took off on websites such as the Drudge Report and InfoWars, run by Trump-supporting conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

(Interesting side note: the story Flynn linked to about the upcoming arrests in the Weiner case—it was posted November 4, and no arrests have yet been made—is on Breibart News, the site run by Trump’s chief White House strategist Steve Bannon, the Trump whisperer talking in the president-elect’s other ear, and the source of the story is Erik Prince, former owner of Blackwater, which supplied mercenaries for the U.S. army during the Iraq War, who is the brother of Betsy DeVos, Trump’s pick for Secretary of Education.)

General Flynn is either gullible enough to believe in the wild-eyed conspiracy theories he wrote about, which means he lacks anywhere near the judgement he needs to be Trump’s security advisor, or he’s a liar spreading wildly untrue fake news for political purposes, which means he lacks the moral fiber to be in a position of national trust. Either way, he’s not fit to be giving advice to the president of the United States—especially a president who loves loose gossip and conspiracy talk and had no problem spreading lies about his Republican primary opponents, Hillary Clinton and anyone else who crosses him. Remember the story that Cruz’s father may have been part of the plot to assassinate JFK?

This article appears in Dec 1-7, 2016.

47 replies on “Gen. Michael Flynn, Conspiracy Tweeter and Trump Whisperer, Is a National Security Risk”

  1. Nothing to see here folks. Move along and wait for the FBI reports on Podesta and Weiner’s emails. Everything was above board.

  3. David,

    I neither know enough to comment on your latest anti-Trump appointment diatirade, nor am I concerned at this moment. These issues will be overly discussed in time.

    Meanwhile, I support all of his choices, subject to further info. To be sure, I am most excited about Donnie’s choices for Defense, HUD and Education. Three long mishandled areas, in my view.

  6. Much better than the current one. At least he pays attention. Settle down David, you will make yourself crazy if you do this for eight years.

  7. Bisbee boy,
    You are excited about trump’s choices for HUD and Education. Let’s see. HUD, Ben Carson publicly admits he has no ability or knowledge to run a federal agency. Should be interesting, and this excites you. Future DOE Sec Devos has no experience with public education as a parent, student, teacher or administrator and doesn’t even believe it should exist. So you don’t want to fix public education, you want to eliminate it. OK. This excites you. Again, interesting.

  8. What’s happening with national governance these days is indeed frightening.

    But let’s rewind a bit: what methods were used by Clinton and the DNC to defeat Sanders’ groundbreaking grass roots campaign to wrest the “Democratic” party out of the hands of neoliberal plutocrats? We didn’t see much coverage of that in this blog, David. And, when it comes to the LARGE purveyors of “liberal” discourse in this country, many of us who followed the NYTimes and the Sanders campaign noticed a disturbing lack of balance in the way that supposed bastion of accurate, fair, well researched journalism reported on Clinton and Sanders. The violations of journalistic integrity and respect for FACTS may not have been of the same magnitude as the Twitter absurdities you report in this piece, but some would say the violations of integrity were different only in scale, not in kind.

    While we’re talking about behaving responsibly with FACTS in political discourse, the problems we have in social media and the blog-o-sphere in this country include not only circulating specious stories that have no basis in fact, they also include what some call “lying-by-omission.” That means failing to report something that is relevant and that voters need to know, for example your own omission of discussion of candidates you endorsed receiving compromising donations from people affiliated with a company to which they had recently voted to grant a multi-million dollar contract. Or your failure to mention the fact that so-called political progressives you had endorsed voted in favor of outsourcing the management of substitute teacher labor and in effect undermined the ability of long term substitute teachers to qualify for benefits. Or the absence in your blog on education of reference to the fact that the AZ Attorney General’s office found that candidates you endorsed for the TUSD Board had violated Open Meeting Law when they voted to discuss the Superintendent’s goals in a closed rather than in an open meeting.

    You object to the subject of this piece being “gullible enough to believe in the wild-eyed conspiracy theories…[or]… a liar spreading wildly untrue fake news for political purposes.” That brings to mind the conspiracy theories you spread about TKF in the days before the November 8 election. With absolutely no basis in fact, you spread speculations about the motives of Tucson business leaders who donated to that IEC, while conspicuously failing to mention documented violations of campaign finance ethics and reporting practices of the candidates you endorsed. See this piece and the comment stream following it:

    http://www.tucsonweekly.com/TheRange/archives/2016/10/10/more-on-the-financial-backers-of-tusd-kids-first

    I imagine some of your readers are enjoying the self-righteous posturing you’ve made your 24/7 occupation since November 8, but to those who’ve paid consistent attention to the quality of reporting you tend to provide, the whole scene — both mainline Democrats and those they love to complain about — brings to mind the famous passage from the first chapter of Isaiah:

    The whole head is sick,
    and the whole heart faint.
    From the sole of the foot even to the head,
    there is no soundness in it.

  10. You guys make this too easy. Canada Free Press is the Arizona Daily Independent with a Toque. In other words, a joke trying to pass itself off as journalism.

  11. Jill Stein’s recount hits a snag in Michigan when Detroit can not reconcile many of their precincts records.

    Michigans largest county voted overwhelmingly for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, but officials couldnt reconcile vote totals for 610 of 1,680 precincts during a countywide canvass of vote results late last month.

    Most of those are in heavily Democratic Detroit, where the number of ballots in precinct poll books did not match those of voting machine printout reports in 59 percent of precincts, 392 of 662.

    According to state law, precincts whose poll books dont match with ballots cant be recounted. If that happens, original election results stand.

    http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2016/12/05/recount-unrecountable/95007392/

  13. By all means, stick to your sources, HCFP. And please be sure to tell us when you find out which Kardashian is carrying Bigfoot’s love child.

  16. Thanks for bringing this information forward. Fake news sites and unfounded accusations did play a negative role in the election. Almost everyone running for office spins their statements but what Flynn is doing goes way beyond that. Re-tweeting stories that have no basis in truth is just wrong and there is no justification for doing that. We must continue to expose these activities for what they are…lies. For a person with the high position that has been given to Flynn to conduct himself this way is dangerous. When the guy went to the Pizzeria to “self investigate” he was armed and discharged his weapon. Imagine the fear that the employees endured in this confrontation. Lies have consequences and Flynn and his son need to take responsibility for posting false information.

  21. Ignoring the politics, what the younger Flynn did in promoting the Hillary selling kids into slavery story almost got people killed. The person who thought it was real brought his AR-15 to a pizza shop & fired off a few shots. It could have killed many people and was completely, idiotically irresponsible.
    The younger Flynn has, appropriately, been fired. If his dad continues to promote his “Flynn Facts” into T’s ears, it will not be good for the US, but I’m betting that nothing will be done until after a disaster occurs.

  22. CNN liberal? Nice try with yet another false narrative. They did more to legitimize Trump than FOX, as well as putting his woman hating apologist-in-chief on their payroll. Sounds pretty lefty to me.

  24. The audience of a network says much about the position of a network. Fox or CNN? The second post on CNN election night was from Alec Baldwin. he announced that world markets were crashing. Checked the Dow over the last 4 weeks?

    http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/09/entertainment/voting-results-celebrity-reaction/

    And then Van Jones called it a “whitelash.” Pure gold from a self avowed communist working for a network that his co-workers sued for racism.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5nH6lAlj0U

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Jones

    Voted one of the most influential media personalities on TV.

  25. From Jon Stewart:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUkv_jPgTeg

    “There is now this idea that anyone who voted for [Donald Trump] has to be defined by the worst of his rhetoric. There are guys in my neighborhood [who voted for Trump] that I love, that I respect, that I think have incredible qualities who are NOT afraid of Mexicans and NOT afraid of Muslims and NOT afraid of Blacks. They’re afraid of their insurance premiums. In the liberal community you hate this idea of creating people as a monolith. ‘Don’t look at Muslims a monolith. They are individuals and it would be ignorance.’ But everybody who voted for Trump is [characterized as] a monolith, [as] a racist. That hypocrisy is also real in our country.”

  26. Wake up and smell the coffee, neoliberal, Wall-Street-accommodating Democrats. You did this to yourselves. The NYTimes reported that exit polls indicated that “Mr. Trump also won over millions of voters who had once flocked to President Obamas promise of hope and change, and who on Tuesday saw in Mr. Trump their best chance to dampen the most painful blows of globalization and trade, to fight special interests, and to be heard and protected. Twelve percent of Mr. Trumps supporters approved of Mr. Obama, according to the exit polls.”

    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/10/us/politics/donald-trump-voters.html?_r=0

    These voters were not RACISTS. They were people damaged by a country that channels the vast majority of its wealth into the pockets of a greedy elite, and they recognized Hillary Clinton as a representative of the interests of that elite. Donald Trump promised them economic security and a change from “business as usual” in DC. Whether he will be able to deliver on his promises to them is something that remains to be seen. It seems to many of us like Sanders would have been a better bet to defend the policy interests of the middle class and working class in this country.

    Whatever the case, the self-righteous outrage of a party that used to be a hell of a lot more effective defending the interests of people who work for a living is ludicrous and beneath contempt.

    Give it a rest already, why don’t you? Apply yourself to putting pressure on Trump to deliver the infrastructure improvements, middle class jobs, and end to DC business-as-usual that he promised. If he doesn’t deliver, report on that so the cohort that put him in office can make better use of its votes in the next election.

  27. The last three posts have no relevance to the article above. But thanks for the blast of hot air, gang.

  28. They do have relevance: the relevance is to the overall themes in Safier’s commentary since the election, which includes this piece, and to many of the comments in the stream, including your own, “Peabo.”

    If TW deletes the comments you object to based on a lack of relevance, they’d have to delete most of your self-congratulatory incivilities in this stream as well.

    (FYI, I think you’d find that there are a lot of people on your side of the political fence who despise the tone you and some of the other commenters take in responding to the conservative “trolls” on these sites.)

  29. Flynn as APNSA would be a disaster waiting to happen. Any president, but Trump especially, needs to have an APNSA who is objective and temperate. That Flynn’s behavior is reminiscent of Nixon’s dirty trickster Donald Segretti is deeply troubling. That his subordinates at DIA found his assertions dubious is a red flag. In the words of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts. That is especially true of an APNSA.

  30. I didn’t ask for anything to be deleted, Try civility some time, so you can unbunch your undies. And you can also thank your president-elect and the losers he’s surrounding himself with for making civility a thing of the past. What’s civil about Sandy Hook deniers? What’s civil about the birther movement? What’s civil about an armed yahoo threatening pizza parlor employees because of a right-wing conspiracy theory? You can blow civility out your you-know-what.

  31. Yep, that’s about exactly the sort of response that could be expected.

    What you don’t seem to understand is that responding in kind to incivility doubles the trouble.

    Go read some Epictetus. There you will learn that no matter what the provocation is, the type of response you offer is YOUR choice and reflects on YOUR character. Those who respond in kind are giving up their freedom to the people to whom they are responding.

  32. It has been with some enjoyment that I watched the reactions from the angry, bitter and lost on the far left. It never seems to matter what source is cited, because according the the angry it is not credible. And then name calling begins. I have to believe the Weekly has no rules on comments because nothing is enforced. Personal insults, name calling and bullying seem to be standard fare here. TW please clean up this site from name calling.

    If Dems Had The Right Agenda…you hit the nail on the head! Thank you.

    And peabo…CNN ran a special tonight on Barack Obama, the most important figure in our lifetime, and how to preserve his legacy. It should have been entitled “Eight Years Squandered.”

    Now let’s fix what’s wrong with America.

  33. Sorry, TCST. You can reference the Greeks all you want, but your use of all-caps outs you as a self-important d-bag. Now, saunter back to your jasmine scented recliner and plot your next rejoinder.

  34. No one is even in office yet. Soon, it will be time for the media at all levels to quit getting all “wee-wee’d up” about Trump-Twitter rants or casual remarks and fairly and factually report day-by-day policies and legislation and government workings. Team Trump went visiting the West Wing of the White House and asked how many workers there were staying and how many were leaving. They did not know that ALL of them are leaving. Get serious.

  35. Yes, there has been a lot of focus Trump’s juvenile personality. But his and his circle’s use of social media do warrant serious scrutiny, especially when a tweet can cause stock to dip or send an unhinged follower into a family restaurant to pop off a couple rounds. Could we see the first armed conflict started by a tweet? I hope we never find out. Flynn has shown himself to be unfit for duty, largely by revealing his lack of judgement through his social media posts.

  36. One person is responsible for what happened at the Pizza joint. Otherwise you could blame automakers for building a car that moves forward or backward. Or beer companies for a person blowing a .10.

  40. I know, and I am so glad. My 401k finally has hope and change. It took eight years to get rid of hopeless despair.

  41. The CIA has concluded that Russia intervened to help Trump win the US election.

    All hail Traitor Elect Trumputin!

    Remember, remember
    the eighth of November,
    The Republican treason and plot!
    I know of no reason why Republican treason
    Should ever be forgot.

  42. The CIA confirmed that Iraq had WMD and the Amb. Stevens was killed by movie protesters. Believe what you want when you want to.

  43. I know 401Ks, and the past 8 years may be a placid sea of boring stability. Trump times are coming. Dollar devaluation perhaps. And if he goes into the Middle East like Bush Jr., the end of boring stability for a long time to come.

  44. Well, Trumputin called for Russian interference in the election, he wants Secretary of State to be one of Putin’s apparatchiks, and Trumputin’s campaign was staffed with yet more Russian pocket pals, so I feel confident to say that we’re look at a Traitor Elect in the White House in January!

    But da, comrades, I’m sure your 401ks are all that matter!

  45. The CIA conclusion was explained this morning. After finding out that democrat and republican emails had been hacked, and only the democrats had their leaked to the media, it must have been a plot to help Trump.

    Let’s order some pointy headed tin foil hats. The other side has decided to don theirs.

    Assumption of motive is not proof of it. And Hillary is out there warning you of “fake news.”

    She was normally the source of it. “It was a protest about a video….

    Mr. Obama has said she was making statements based on intelligence reports she had received. From whom? Hillary Clinton?

    http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2012/11/16/flashback-what-susan-rice-said-about-benghazi/

    When we landed we came under sniper fire…

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZHO1vo762c

    The memories were “etched” in her mind. Who is the queen of fake news?

    The former Secretary of Fake, that’s who.

  46. Hillary is gone, maybe forever. She doesn’t matter anymore. Trump has got to try honest truth for a change. Without some truth and integrity in office he will make huge and lethal mistakes.

  47. If there are any real journalists or writers or politicians who do not blindly believe fake news, then they should realize that there are millions and millions of us who really want to read about Trump’s true background: taxes, business deals, foreign governments, cronyism, bribes, media manipulation and possible illegal acts. No more “But Hillary…” because she is gone, gone, really gone.

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