Revolution by KT McFarland

Author:KT McFarland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: N/A
Publisher: Post Hill Press
Published: 2019-12-19T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

Flynn Death Watch

When Trump finally arrived in Washington a few days before the Inauguration, he stayed at Trump International, his own marble and gold five-star luxury hotel two blocks from the White House. On January 20th, after taking the oath of office on the steps of the Capitol building, President and Mrs. Trump walked along Independence Avenue to the reviewing stand set up in front of the White House. After the bands and troops paraded by, the new President Trump walked across the North Lawn and into the West Wing of the White House. Flynn and I followed close behind. It had been a magical week of celebration. We were filled with enthusiasm and eager to pursue the new direction mandated by the American voters.

Despite my previous fears, the NSC staff was up and functioning on day one. The outgoing and incoming staff members who worked on the handover had done their jobs well, or as well as could be expected for such an earthquake of change from one president to the next. But then reality hit. The first crisis didn’t come from abroad as I feared, but from within Washington, actually from within a handful of offices in the West Wing.

The barrage of negative press stories and swirling rumors about General Flynn were taking their toll. The anti-Flynn media frenzy actually escalated, now fed in part by leaks apparently coming from within the White House itself. During Oval Office meetings President Trump’s attitude to Flynn showed none of the bonhomie of the Transition. He often blamed Flynn for the bad press, interrupting Oval Office briefings saying, “Mike, you’ve got to stop this.” But there was nothing Flynn could do. Other than shouldering some of the workload, there was nothing I could do, either.

I felt a personal responsibility to help buck him up. But I felt an institutional responsibility as well. In those early days, the NSC was the only functioning part of Trump’s new foreign policy team. Many Cabinet nominees were still being grilled by Senate committees, with their confirmation by no means guaranteed. Senior positions had been vacated by departing Obama officials, and Trump hadn’t nominated his own people to take their places. It would take a number of days before Rex Tillerson was confirmed as Secretary of State. It fell to Flynn and me, as his deputy, to cover for everyone in the interim.

Adding to the confusion was the fact that every foreign government immediately wanted to forge a relationship with the new Administration. Not only was Trump himself an outsider and an unknown quantity, but so were the people around him, since he had refused to appoint establishment Republican insiders to his Administration. Understandably, foreign officials were flummoxed. They suddenly had to deal with people they didn’t know, in hopes of learning about policies that were still in formation, led by a new president who seemed to relish his own unpredictability. They were in a scramble to connect to Trump and his senior staff. Because

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