There is some buzz that real estate mogul Donald Trump is looking very seriously at choosing retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, to be his running mate.
Trump hinted at the possibility in an interview on Fox News, saying, “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.”
An anonymous source told The Washington Post, “Trump-Flynn. I’ve heard him say that, kind of test out the sound of it. I think it’s a brand he finds appealing.”
Here are five things you need to know about Lt. Gen. Flynn.
1. He’s a lifelong Democrat who is pro-choice…or not?
Flynn’s recent comments on abortion can be best described as muddled. In an interview with ABC’s This Week, he told host Martha Raddatz, “These are difficult issues, but I think women have to be able to choose what they — you know, sort of the right of choice, but I think that that’s a difficult legal decision that — and I think that women are so important in that decision-making process.”
“They are the ones that have to make the decision, because they’re the ones that are going to decide to bring up that child or not,” he added.
After receiving backlash from pro-lifers over his comments, Flynn attempted to clarify his abortion stance, telling Fox News that he’s a “pro-life Democrat” who believes “the law changed”:
Mike Flynn tells me his mother was pro-Life, he attended pro-Life rallies with her as a boy and drove pro-life floats for her. @FoxNews
— Jennifer Griffin (@JenGriffinFNC) July 11, 2016
.@GenFlynn tells me “This pro-choice issue is a legal issue that should be decided by the courts. If people want to change the law, vote.
— Jennifer Griffin (@JenGriffinFNC) July 11, 2016
Or maybe they shouldn’t vote…
Mike Flynn tells me: “If people are going to decide election on abortion issue they should just stay home.” Says he is “pro-Life Democrat.”
— Jennifer Griffin (@JenGriffinFNC) July 11, 2016
HotAir’s Allahpundit attempted to decipher Flynn’s abortion comments and believes Flynn was making a statement about how presidential candidates won’t have much effect on abortion given the Supreme Court’s rulings on the matter.
“Flynn’s telling you here that it’s silly to make abortion an electoral litmus test when there’s not a lot to be done about it electorally, at least at the presidential level,” writes Allahpundit. “Evidently lots of Republican voters agree or else we wouldn’t be blessed with presumptive nominee Donald Trump.”
2. He claims the Obama administration fired him from his position as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency because of his rhetoric on radical Islam.
Flynn said in a piece for the New York Post that he asked the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, if he was being fired because his “leadership of the agency was in question,” and Clapper said that wasn’t the case.
“I knew then it had more to do with the stand I took on radical Islamism and the expansion of al Qaeda and its associated movements,” wrote Flynn. “I felt the intel system was way too politicized, especially in the Defense Department. After being fired, I left the meeting thinking, ‘Here we are in the middle of a war, I had a significant amount of combat experience (nearly five years) against this determined enemy on the battlefield and served at senior levels, and here it was, the bureaucracy was letting me go.'”
Flynn also pointed out the need to win the battle politically as well militarily:
As we defeat them on the ground, we must clearly and forcefully attack their crazy doctrines. Defeat on battlefields does great damage to their claim to be acting as agents of divine will. After defeating al Qaeda in Iraq, we should have challenged the Islamic world and asked: “How did we win? Did Allah change sides?”
We need to denounce them as false prophets, as we insist on the superiority of our own political vision. This applies in equal measure to the radical secular elements of the enemy coalition. Is North Korea some sort of success story? Does anyone this side of a university seminar think the Cuban people prefer the Castros’ tyranny to real freedom? Is Vladimir Putin a model leader for the 21st-century world?
Just as the Muslim world has failed, so the secular tyrants have wrecked their own countries. They hate us in part because they know their own peoples would prefer to live as we do. They hope to destroy us before they have to face the consequences of their many failures.
Flynn once told Al Jazeera, “I’ve been at war with Islam, or a, or a component of Islam, for the last decade.”
He later said, “We are at war with a radical component of Islam and the way I believe it is that Islam is a … political ideology based on a religion.”
The potential vice-president nominee has also tweeted: “Fear of Muslims is RATIONAL.”
3. Flynn refuses to use the term “undocumented” to describe illegal aliens.
Raddatz asked Flynn if the “undocumented immigrants” should all be deported, and Flynn wouldn’t let her get away with using that politically correct language.
“Are they here illegally? I mean, if they’re here illegally, then it’s illegal,” Flynn said. “I mean, again, back to my very first point, the rule of law in this country is probably the single biggest strategic advantage that we have, above and beyond all other countries in the world. And we cannot allow the rule of law to break down.”
4. Flynn seems to be in favor of gay marriage.
When Raddatz asked Flynn about his position on gay marriage, Flynn responded, “What people do in their private lives, these are not big issues that our country is dealing with that will cause our country to collapse. I’m more concerned that our country could collapse because we are not dealing with education issues, immigration issues.”
5. He has also previously paid lip service to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
In an interview with RT back in March, Flynn said he “definitely disagree[d]” with the administration’s view that Russia was not helpful in the fight against ISIS:
“I’m speaking really as a private citizen,” Flynn said. “The United States can’t sit there and say, ‘Russia, you’re bad.’” Flynn said the two countries were “in a marriage, whether we like it or not,” and that Moscow and Washington should “stop acting like two bullies in a playground” and “quit acting immature with each other.”
Flynn also praised what he described as Russia’s contributions to international stability. “Europe would not be the Europe that it is today, thriving, had it not been for Russia and the United States working together 75 years ago,” Flynn said, an apparent reference to the victory over Nazi Germany by the U.S. and the Soviet Union in World War II. Flynn didn’t mention the ensuing partitioning of Europe nor a generations-long Cold War that put the Americans and the Soviets on the opposite sides of an ideological divide and led to a nuclear arms race.
“This idea of us not being able to work together is a misnomer,” Flynn said.
Flynn and Trump seem like two peas in a pod.
