Michael Flynn, in his own words, belongs to the pantheon, alongside leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and President John F. Kennedy, who spoke truth and paid with their lives. “I’m amazed they haven’t murdered me,” the former Trump National Security Advisor says in his new book.
[[{“value”:”Michael Flynn belongs in the pantheon of excellent American martyrs, along with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and President John F. Kennedy, who spoke truth to power and paid for it with their lives, to hear him say it. ” I’m surprised they have n’t killed me”, the former Trump National Security Adviser says in his new eponymous film. We’ve gone from a natural assassination of a president of the United States to a character assassination of a national security adviser, so I’m surprised they let me continue to live.
Flynn: Deliver the Truth. Whatever the Cost. is a two-hour effort to restore the image of the three-star general, who was once regarded as a brilliant military intelligence officer but who has been sacked as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014, has generated an endless stream of sensational headlines.
One of his biggest hits was accepting$ 45,000 to attend a 2015 dinner in Moscow, where he sat next to Vladimir Putin, and leading anti-Clinton chants of” Lock her up”! at the 2016 Republican National Convention, working as an unregulated foreign agent for the authoritarian Greek government while advising Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign. Then came his pardon by Trump, his lying to the FBI, and his attempt to persuade Trump to use the defense to overturn the results of the 2020 election. It’s really a record, which is why a movie press release calls Flynn” the most hated British general in US history.”
It’s really a record, and the reason why a press release for the film describes Flynn as” the most reviled American General in modern US history”.
Following the 2020 election, Flynn successfully transformed from a pariah status into a social movement with his extremely powerful ReAwaken America tour, a series of conferences that resemble a tent revival, but with a mishmash of anti-vaxxers, self-proclaimed prophets, election deniers like MyPillow Guy Mike Lindell, QAnon adherents, and an assortment of Trump family members. Many thousand people showed up for the Pennsylvania event I took in 2022.
Authoritarianism expert Ruth Ben- Ghiat, told the AP in 2022 that Flynn is “one of the most hazardous individuals in America today”. She continued,” He is spearheading the attack on our democracy, which is coming from many sources, and he is affiliated with many of these sectors, from the military to Christian nationalism to election denial to extremist groups. All of this adds up to present a very real threat. And he’s at the center”.
Before the election, ReAwaken’s tour appears to be wrapping up. Instead of taking a tour bus to churches and community centers in outposts like Branson, Missouri and Fargo, North Dakota for the past two months, Flynn has been filming a movie that promises to expose” the complex web of political intrigue and the serious persecution General Flynn faced after exposing deep-rooted corruption within the corridors of power.” His most devoted followers could yet score$ 200 VIP tickets that offered photo ops with the public, plus a tote bag full of Flynn swag.
Without the considerable supporting cast of the ReAwaken America events, I traveled to Charleston, West Virginia, in early May to see how Flynn’s novel film venture was doing. I also hoped it would reveal what a man Trump previously considered a potential running mate might come up against.
When I arrived, Flynn’s tour bus was parked outside a West Virginia State University auditorium. Given Flynn’s popularity among white nationalists, the historically Black university appeared incongruent, but I later learned that its student body is about 80 % light. Flynn’s well-known murder boards dotted a corridor inside. Photos, news clippings, printouts of Trump tweets, dates of significant events, and some highlights from particular counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation covered the great panels, all crisscrossed with pinned- up strings like a serial killer investigation.
When Alicia Nash enters her math-whiz husband’s office and discovers that he had been spending his days plastering the walls with secretive detritus, which was also connected by strings, I felt like I had stumbled into the A Beautiful Mind scene. Flynn claims that two fans made his boards because John Nash had schizophrenia.
Retired Gen. Michael Flynn shows original Fox News host Tucker Carlson his murder boards. Courtesy of Flynn Film
I snuck into the auditorium only as a member of Flynn’s crew appeared to be gathering the few journalists for interviews, as I afterwards learned. Outside, most of the seats had been roped off to force the 50 or so attendees to cluster at the front thus creating the illusion of a full house. A gun sight was superimposed over Flynn’s harsh face, a gigantic image of him in profile looming over the stage. Boone Cutler, an Iraqi veteran who was injured in a 2005 mortar attack that left him with a traumatic brain injury, served as the night’s MC.
Cutler warmed up the room by asking where people had come from. ” The People’s Republic of Fairfax County” a Virginian man exclaimed. One of the few Black attendees volunteered that she’d flown in from Savanah, Georgia, where she’d seen the film when before. Many, if not most, of the audience appeared to be coming at the request of” special guest” Derrick Evans, a rioter who was running for a congressional seat in West Virginia on January 6.
How some of you believe Gen. Flynn entered prison? Cutler asked the audience members. About two-thirds of them raised their hands. You have all been the target of an intelligence operation! Cutler told them with a laugh, before informing them that Flynn always went to jail. Then came the obligatory singing of the national anthem, a congratulatory note for the tour sponsor, Beverly Hills Precious Metals Exchange, Flynn’s “gold buyer of choice,” and ultimately, the movie.
First images in Flynn evoke memories of the general’s early life, which included spending most of his time surfing in the warm waters off the Atlantic coast, which he still pursues. Huge footage of the naked, 65- year- ancient paddling out to sea evokes a waterborne version of Vladimir Putin’s horseback riding portraits.
Courtesy of Flynn Film
Family-friendly movie is shown. Flynn is the fifth of nine siblings from a Democratic working- class family, and four of them appear in the film, along with Flynn’s wife Lori, son Michael Jr., and a teary niece who helped run his legal defense fund.
Flynn narrates his private history from what appears to be a home situation room, which is surrounded by walls covered in maps, a classroom-sized whiteboard, and tables large enough to accommodate plans to sack the US Capitol or kidnap Greek religious leaders. The former Army paratrooper tells a tale from this retirement command post about an early, early experience, in which he claims,” I actually learned about being stable.”
Soon after taking command of a battalion of several hundred people, he was summoned to the site of a fatal helicopter crash. You’re standing right there going “holy crap,” he remark mournfully as he speaks of the smell of the bodies that were burned and the fuel that was burning. ” Nine people” Flynn does n’t specify the location of the crash, but his despair over all the senseless deaths he’s witnessed—and participated in—permeates the film.
It’s difficult to say whether his trauma from the front lines of the war that led to his latest course. His criticism of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is bittersweet. He takes some genuine potshots at the later Secretary of State Colin Powell, who played a vital role in justifying the Iraq invasion. However, Flynn may have harbored resentment toward Powell, who previously described him as a “jerk” and “right-wing nuts” in emails leaked in 2016.
The entire movie is exactly that. Only when I thought one of his honest rants might lead to a real insight into Flynn’s psyche, a Google search would expose it as simply a variation on lengthy- simmering and often aired grievances by someone who has never forgiven Barack Obama for warning Trump not to hire him.
In the same way, the movie about makes his claims that he was the victim of an aggressive Justice Department seem believable. However, Tracy Beanz shows up to offer color commentary. Identified as an “investigative journalist” in the film, Beanz, whose true name is Tracy Diaz, was an early promoter of the even- right QAnon conspiracy theory, which posits that an elite Democratic cabal has been running a global pedophile ring. Flynn embraced the cult-like movement a couple years back, going so far as to post a video of himself reciting the QAnon maxim,” Where we go one, we go all.”
” I think it’s reasonable to expect them to try to kill you, possibly by shooting you in Dealy Plaza, but also by imprisoning you, devasting your family, silence you, and dismiss you as ridiculous,” he said.
But many fringe players populate the film that I had to look up the backstory of almost everyone who appeared on screen for a refresher. Tucker Carlson, who calls Flynn’s story “inspirational,” was one character that I did n’t have to look up. The original Fox News host draws parallels between the public and JFK, who he claims was murdered by the government. If you’re Flynn, he says,” I think it’s fair to expect that they will try to kill you—maybe not shoot you in Dealy Plaza, but put you in prison, impoverish your family, silence you, dismiss you in the eyes of most as ridiculous”.
Flynn is another illustration of how talented right-wing filmmakers have been at producing these kinds of propaganda films. It is a triumph of revisionist history. Producer Scott Wiper does a fantastic job of portraying a man who previously claimed that Covid vaccines were being distributed in secret through salad dressing as highly affordable. Flynn reminded me of Dinesh D’Souza’s latest epic, Police State, which I saw in a theater next year.
Similar to Flynn, D’Souza received a pardon from Trump in his case for a felony conviction for making straw donations to a New York Senate candidate. Police State radically altered D’Souza’s case as retaliation for his lies, full with the use of the gun-sight imagery. I came apart from it temporarily convinced that the rioters who attacked the US Capitol on January 6 were in fact “nonviolent protesters” and victims of corrupt jack- fired FBI agents. Police State was absolutely impossible to fact-check in actual time.
I found myself disoriented as well when I watched Flynn, which attempts to portray all of his struggles as the result of a rogue state bent on demonizing a valiant dissident rather than as the result of his own deeds. It’s therefore encouraging that when I returned home from Charleston, I suggested to my media- critic husband that maybe Flynn actually was getting a bad rap from reporters.
It took me days to dig through the archives, through the mountains of ancient legal documents and Flynn profiles, to separate the truth from the fiction once I understood what was going on. For instance, in the movie, Flynn constantly insists that he rarely discussed lifting sanctions with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak during the call that led to his criminal prosecution. Well, here’s the declassified transcript of the call showing that he did really discuss sanctions. ( Flynn in the movie asserts that the transcript, which was made available to members of Congress, is fake. )
Or how about Flynn’s portrayal of the “pardon of innocence” he claims he both desired nor needed from Trump? As one of the film’s leading villains, US District Judge Emmet Sullivan, observed, the pardon “does not, standing alone, render ( Mr. Flynn ) innocent of the alleged violation”. And the pardon Trump granted to Flynn does n’t mention innocence in the statement that can be found here.
One of Flynn’s specialties is skilfully deploying omissions. Lawyer Sidney Powell is lionized for helping the withdrew public try to withdraw his guilty plea in the Russia case, but she’s certainly interviewed in the movie—probably for good reason. She pleaded guilty to six misdemeanor counts of conspiring to help Trump win the election in October after playing a key role in the” Stop the Steal” campaign.
Flynn was ordered to appear before the special grand jury in that case because, among other things, he had previously suggested that Trump send the military to swing states and “practically re-run an election in each of those states.” He even had joined Powell at the White House to lobby for invoking martial law and seizing voting machines. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis chose not to file charges, despite the particular grand jury’s recommendation to also indict him. Nothing in the movie is covered in it, which comes to a cheerleading halt shortly after the general receives the pardon he claims he did n’t need.
As I watched happy scenes of the naked retiree shooting hoops with his brother in the pool—he played water polo in college— I asked myself why I was wasting so much time on a movie about a guy I’m not sure anyone also cares about. The biggest mystery that still haunts Flynn is that I realized I wanted the movie to address: How did he get around? Why did a decorated defense general who was known for his leadership in the defense intelligence decide to take the QAnon oath one day? Why did for a famous direct talker plead the Second dozens of times when he was deposed by the House January 6 committee?
People have been asking these questions for years, but no one has yet discovered the fundamental theory that underlies Michael Flynn’s transformation. His film also does n’t offer one. If Flynn the movie fails to shed little light on the unraveling of Flynn the man, it does succeed as a painful reminder of what the Trump years were like—with all the chaos and corruption—and a foreshadowing of what might happen should he be elected again.
Then that Trump has dumped that traitor, Mike Pence, whose performance in the movie sparked a horde of boos, people are talking about how many they want to see him pick Flynn as his 2024 running mate in Charleston. An audience member asked Flynn straight during the Q&, A whether he would return to public service. In response, he turned, raised his eyebrows, and tilted his head sadly towards his photo with the gun target on it, before hinting that he really well might do so should Trump get elected.
He has n’t completely abandoned politics. He was elected to the Sarasota County, Florida GOP administrative board in September 2022. That same year, the AP calculated that Flynn endorsed 99 candidates for several offices. Two West Virginia candidates he’d endorsed in Charleston accompanied him on stage: Mac Warner, a rioter, and Evans, the rioter on January 6. They both lost the GOP primary a few days afterwards.
Last year, Trump was speaking constantly about Flynn serving in a second administration. In a ReAwaken event held at the Trump Doral in Miami in May 2023, Trump said,” You just have to stay healthier because we’re bringing you back.” ” We’re going to bring you back,” the statement read.
Trump’s campaign team seems to have tamped down his public promises of a Flynn return, but that has n’t kept the controversial general away from the former president. Trump and Flynn took to the stage when his philanthropic organization America’s Future held a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago in March 2024. Trump remarked,” You’re a wonderful guy. ” I really want to thank you for all you’ve done for the country”.
Flynn warned during the Q&, A in Charleston that a Trump victory in the fall “is certainly a given.” According to him,” we will have about 30 million Christians who wo n’t vote” in the presidential election if history is any guide.” ” We simply cannot have that”.
He exhorted people to form their churches, cast ballots, and of course, purchase some of his books. Therefore Flynn prayed a final time for the audience. MC Boone Cutler did the honors, on behalf of people” who want this country cleaned and cleansed”. He requested the Lord’s assistance in persuading those who were unsure of Flynn’s message. Whatever the cost, Flynn was about to make his second stop in Blakely, Pennsylvania, when the tour bus approached the door and approached the door.”}]] Michael Flynn belongs in the pantheon of wonderful British martyrs, along with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and President John F. Kennedy, who fought for justice with their lives. In his new book, the former Trump National Security Advisor writes,” I’m surprised they have n’t killed me.”
Michael Flynn, in his own words, belongs to the pantheon, alongside leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and President John F. Kennedy, who spoke truth and paid with their lives. “I’m amazed they haven’t murdered me,” the former Trump National Security Advisor says in his new book.
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