Trump's Favorite General
politico.com
Michael Flynn is more than a valued adviser to the presumptive GOP nominee. He's also a potential VP candidate.
As the military's top spy, Michael Flynn repeatedly butted heads with the Obama administration during a rocky tenure in which he was ultimately forced out. He then broke ranks with most national security leaders in Washington when he became one of the earliest backers of Donald Trump.
Now Flynn, 57, who has both briefed Trump in person and penned memos for him, has emerged as more than a valued informal adviser — he’s a potential running-mate.
Trump associates say that Flynn has been the subject of growing discussions inside the campaign, as Trump himself has signaled publicly that he is exploring a running mate beyond the ranks of politicians, including from the military.
“I like the generals. I like the concept of the generals. We're thinking about — actually there are two of them that are under consideration,” Trump said Wednesday on Fox News.
Flynn is one of them, according to two people close to Trump. The head of the Defense Intelligence Agency from 2012 to 2014, Flynn has advised the candidate on the Islamic State, Iran and the military, according to a Trump associate familiar with the discussions. And he’s briefed Trump in-person at Trump Tower, beginning last fall ahead of a debate focused on foreign affairs.
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By relying on the retired general and floating his interest in a vice president from the military, Trump is seeking to burnish his national security and foreign policy bona fides. To do it, he has chosen a forceful and increasingly vocal hawk who is more than willing to ruffle feathers and has recently promulgated views that have led some of his longtime colleagues to say they barely recognize the highly capable military officer.
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The New York Post earlier this week reported that Flynn was being actively vetted, which the retired general did not deny. “One of the things I expect Mr. Trump would look for in a vice president is discretion,” Flynn told the paper. Trump sources said Flynn was actively under consideration but declined to say he if was being vetted.
Other top potential Trump running mates include Govs. Chris Christie of New Jersey and Mike Pence of Indiana and former Speaker Newt Gingrich. Two senators, after being very publicly floated, Joni Ernst and Bob Corker, took themselves out of contention this week. Trump himself has said the list is as long as 10 names.
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He has shaped some of Trump's views, including disdain for the recent nuclear agreement with Iran and calls for a far more aggressive strategy to confront Islamic extremism at home and abroad — a "grave danger" he says "threatens our way of life."
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Flynn held some of the top military intelligence positions over the course of his 33-year military career. He served the director of intelligence for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the U.S. Central Command, which oversees operations in the Middle East, the NATO mission in Afghanistan, and the Joint Special Operations Command — culminating in the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
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Flynn has expressed other views that seem in conflict with Trump, who has said the United States cannot police the world. "We must be capable of nation building, negotiating, and fighting all at the same time," Flynn wrote in Small Wars Journal, when he was a two-star general in 2011.
The growing chatter about his key role in the Trump campaign coincides with his new book, “The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies,” scheduled for release July 12. A vice presidential trial balloon certainly would drive interest in the text, and possibly juice sales.
He teamed up on the book with Michael Ledeen, a prominent member of a group of scholars and former government officials that helped shape the views of many top national security leaders in the George W. Bush administration. Ledeen said Flynn has plans to be in Cleveland, site of the Republican National Convention, next week, and described a man who sounded a lot like Trump — brash, bold and unconcerned with how he’s perceived.
“Flynn is not the type of guy who calculates the consequences of what he’s about to say,” said Ledeen. “He answers the question.”
Plaster, one of Flynn’s confidantes, predicted that whether or not Trump selected him for the VP slot, Flynn is likely to play an influential role in a Trump administration, possibly as director of national intelligence.
"He is the kind of people that people want to follow."