White House Suggests It Hired a National Security Adviser Without Googling Him
By Eric Levitz
March 10, 2017
1:45 p.m
When Donald Trump named Michael Flynn as his national security adviser last November, liberals had good cause to raise their eyebrows. The retired general had established himself as a proud Islamophobe — one who believed that “fear of Muslims is rational,” and that Democrats had tried to impose Sharia law on the state of Florida.
But Flynn wasn’t merely a delusional bigot (a title that belongs on the résumés of no small number of Trump appointees) — he was a delusional bigot who could be bought.
In July 2016, Flynn hailed the coup attempt against Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan as an event “worth clapping for.” This is about what you’d expect Flynn to say. Erdogan is an Islamist, after all.
But in an op-ed published on Election Day, Flynn struck a radically different note. Four months after cheering an attempt on Erdogan’s life, the Trump campaign surrogate criticized the Obama administration for keeping the Turkish president “at arms’ length” — and demanded that the U.S. extradite the man Erdogan blamed for the coup, Fethullah Gülen, who resides in Pennsylvania.
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