Rush’s Rant about Michael Flynn

Let me make a general point first: You can tell a lot about the motives of someone by their tone and vocabulary. If you have to talk about “chum in the water” and being “”pig-sticking mad” and “political assassinations,” then you’re probably not on the side of sweet reasonableness.

Now, if he lied to Mike Pence and said, “No, no, no, I didn’t talk to the guy. I didn’t talk to the guy about sanctions. I didn’t talk about maybe lifting the sanctions. No, no, no, I didn’t.” And if he did do that, if he lied to Pence, then, okay, there’s a reason for Flynn to be in trouble and maybe to resign, get out of the way.Note the “if’s.” At this point as I write this, it has been extensively corroborated that Flynn did, indeed, lie about the call. One of the big unanswered questions about this whole mess is: How could Flynn not have known, with his extensive background in intelligence, that his phone call with the Russian ambassador would be monitored? It strains credulity, but there it is. His series of half-baked excuses has all the marks of someone who has been caught completely off guard. He seems to have settled on the classic “I don’t remember.”

But of course somehow this whole affair has to be the fault of those dastardly Democrats and their allies in crime, the drive-by media. So Limbaugh tries, if I’m reading this correctly, to make Flynn simultaneously into a principled martyr laying down his sword in the cause and a tool of Barack Obama. Early in the piece Limbaugh says:

The question is, what did Barack Obama know and when did he know it and what has he engineered here?

So . . . huh. I’m kind of stumped. Did then-President Obama somehow orchestrate the phone calls between Flynn and the Russian ambassador? Limbaugh then goes on to elaborate on this idea. I’m giving a fairly long section in order to fully lay out his argument:

Mike Flynn, who, do you know he worked for Obama four different times? You didn’t know that? Let me find the details. In September 2011, Mike Flynn was promoted to lieutenant general assigned to the office of the Director of National Intelligence by Barack Obama. On April 17th, 2012, President Barack Obama nominated Michael Flynn to be the 18th director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

The defense department has its own intel operation and he ran it, as opposed to the Central Intelligence Agency. It’s called the DIA, and it’s big, and it’s relevant, and it’s important, and it does great work, and Flynn ran it after having been promoted to lead it by Obama in 2012. He took command of the DIA in July of 2012. He is a member of the Democrat Party, according to Wikipedia. Michael Flynn is a member of the Democrat Party.

Aside from all of this, he has a reputation as a great man. He’s also a hawk. And that’s something the left just can’t abide.

If you can figure out what Rush Limbaugh is trying to do in the preceding paragraphs, I’ll give you a nickel. On the one hand, Flynn’s a registered Democrat who worked for Barack Obama, so those facts have to mean that he’s a villain, perhaps a mole placed in the Trump camp to wreak havoc. But . . . he also “has a reputation as a great man.” And, totally inexplicably, he’s a hawk on Russia. Wh-a-a-a-a-t? I guess he’s working to bankrupt the Russians by accepting money from them. Deep stuff, that.

Limbaugh leaves out some key ideas about Flynn’s record under Obama. Did you notice that he doesn’t spell out how Flynn left his job under the Obama administration and how he became a full-throated leader of the “lock her up” chants at Trump rallies? (Flynn’s supporters prefer to say that he “called for her incarceration.” Much more genteel!) The fact of the matter is, Flynn was forced out of his position under the Obama administration mainly because of his chaotic management style. He seems to have been embittered by this removal, and that bitterness led to his becoming a Trump fan.

Well, time would fail me to go through the whole article. I’d encourage you to read it yourself. Be especially alert to the numerous whiffs of whataboutism scattered throughout. And be sure you pay attention to the one honest sentence in the whole piece: “There will be more ICE raids this afternoon to make people forget about this.” Did you get that? Those raids are for the purpose of distraction from the meltdown of the Trump presidency, not for America’s security. That’s what he says, anyway. I don’t think he meant to be quite that plain.

Well, I’d better get this posted or it’s going to be so stale (over 24 hours old!) that no one will want to read it. The tidal wave of desperate attempts to justify the Trump administration is only going to grow.

“Limbaugh on Flynn Resignation: The Question Is What Did Barack Obama Know and When Did He Know It?”