Trump hires on the best! That’s what he told us throughout the (too) long campaign season. Now that he is President-elect Trump, he’s nominating a string of uniquely unqualified people. From an Education Secretary who has never worked one day in education and never attended a public school (nor her children) to Dr. Ben Carson as the head of the Department of Housing and Urban Development because he’s … a former surgeon? The only real qualification they have is loyalty to Trump.
The same can be said for retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who Trump has named for the critical role of National Security Advisor. In this role, the National Security Advisor produces research, briefings and intelligence reports and reports directly to the president. These briefings contain information about foreign and domestic threats. It’s critical the information provided to the president is accurate. Based on that, it is outrageous and reckless that Donald Trump has hired someone who has spread fake news throughout the presidential campaign:
As Donald Trump’s national security adviser, retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn will have to advise the president of the veracity of foreign and domestic threats, separating those that require immediate policy action from propaganda or misinformation.
But Flynn himself has used social media to promote a series of outrageous conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton, President Barack Obama and their inner circles in recent months — pushing dubious factoids at least 16 times since Aug. 9, according to a POLITICO review of his Twitter posts. Flynn, who has 106,000 Twitter followers, has used the platform to retweet accusations that Clinton is involved with child sex trafficking and has "secretly waged war” on the Catholic Church, as well as charges that Obama is a “jihadi” who “laundered” money for Muslim terrorists.
Now some say Flynn’s fondness for spreading fake news casts doubt on his fitness to serve as the White House’s national security adviser, suggesting that he either can’t spot a blatant falsehood or is just ideologically bent to believe the worst of his perceived enemies.
There is another name for fake news: propaganda. Much of it sponsored by Russia:
The flood of “fake news” this election season got support from a sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign that created and spread misleading articles online with the goal of punishing Democrat Hillary Clinton, helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining faith in American democracy, say independent researchers who tracked the operation.
Russia’s increasingly sophisticated propaganda machinery — including thousands of botnets, teams of paid human “trolls,” and networks of websites and social-media accounts — echoed and amplified right-wing sites across the Internet as they portrayed Clinton as a criminal hiding potentially fatal health problems and preparing to hand control of the nation to a shadowy cabal of global financiers. The effort also sought to heighten the appearance of international tensions and promote fear of looming hostilities with nuclear-armed Russia.
Either Flynn fell for the propaganda hook, line and sinker and was unable to differentiate between real news and propaganda—or, he intentionally sent out propaganda and false information to the public. In either case, it is disqualifying for a role in national security. Period. End story.