USADaily -
On Fox News last night, Donald Trump again defended his embattled former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, and then blamed President Obama for not sufficiently vetting Michael Flynn to be Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser.
Oh yes.
Trump is now claiming that Obama appointed Flynn as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency from 2012 to 2014, and therefore Obama is to blame for Trump trusting Flynn in 2017.
Now, for starters, President Obama fired Flynn in 2014. Or rather, Flynn stepped down a year before his term was over. More from Buzzfeed:
“I spoke at DIA last month,” [Colin] Powell wrote in a July 19 email exchange with his son. “Flynn got fired as head of DIA. His replacement is a black Marine 3-star. I asked why Flynn got fired. Abusive with staff, didn’t listen, worked against policy, bad management, etc. He has been and was right-wing nutty every [sic] since. I watched about five minutes on line of his talked [sic] and switched off.”
Inside DIA, the NYT reports, Flynn is known to be loose with the facts, like his former boss, Donald Trump:
Mr. Trump and General Flynn both see themselves as brash outsiders who hustled their way to the big time. They both post on Twitter often about their own successes, and they have both at times crossed the line into outright Islamophobia.
They also both exhibit a loose relationship with facts: General Flynn, for instance, has said that Shariah, or Islamic law, is spreading in the United States (it is not). His dubious assertions are so common that when he ran the Defense Intelligence Agency, subordinates came up with a name for the phenomenon: They called them “Flynn facts.”
If Trump was relying on President Obama’s recommendation of Flynn, then Trump shouldn’t have hired Flynn at all, because Obama fired Flynn. In fact, Trump ignored Obama’s judgment of Flynn, and hired Flynn anyway. So it’s nonsensical for Trump to now suggest that President Obama somehow duped him.
Also, even if Obama hadn’t fired Flynn, Flynn was out from mid-2014. Trump should have had someone do a background check on Flynn for the two and a half years between him being fired and joining the Trump White House. Not necessarily to see if Flynn was a Russian spy, but simply to see what Flynn’s conflicts were. You don’t hire someone for a top White House job without vetting them to make sure they won’t make you look bad.
Trump either didn’t have Flynn checked out, or he didn’t care. And as a result, Trump was himself forced to fire Flynn, and now Flynn is under investigation.
And Trump now blaming this all on Obama comes across as childish and insecure.
Once again, we see that Donald Trump isn’t a great businessman and doesn’t hire the best people. Once again we see that Donald Trump is treating the White House as his biggest licensing deal yet. Trump would put his name on the US government and let other people handle the details. And once again, we’re seeing Trump’s laziness and lack of intellectual curiosity bite him in the backside.
With the election of Donald Trump, AMERICAblog’s independent journalism and activism is more needed than ever.
Please support our work with a generous donation. (If you prefer PayPal, use this link.) We don’t make much on advertising, we need your support to continue our work. Thanks.
Follow me on Twitter & Facebook:
Source
