Michael Flynn
Retired Gen. Mike Flynn appeared on the December 27, 2023, edition of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ show to praise the host, saying that when he “had first seen him in 2008 and 2009” he had said, “That guy's absolutely right on the money.” In the years since, Flynn has served as the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and White House national security adviser, and could potentially return to government under a second Trump administration.
Jones is one of the country’s leading conspiracy theorists. He has pushed false claims about a variety of tragedies, including the mass shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School; the Boston Marathon bombing; and 9/11. In November, Jones aired a report questioning the Holocaust death toll.
The families of the Sandy Hook shooting victims successfully sued Jones for his lies about the tragedy.
Despite Jones’ long history of toxicity, right-wing media figures and Republican politicians — including former President Donald Trump — have embraced him over the years.
Among Jones’ admirers is Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser who twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI before being pardoned by Trump. Prior to that, Flynn also served as the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency under then-President Barack Obama, but was fired in 2014.
Trump has suggested that Flynn will be involved in his potential second administration, telling him at an event last year: “We’re going to bring you back.”
Flynn has also acted as a far-right media commentator and has repeatedly made toxic remarks. In 2021, he warned his audience that “we're being marched” to Nazi death camps but that, unlike Holocaust victims, he “would never get on that train.” He also seemed to call for a Myanmar-style coup in the United States (which he later denied); encouraged Trump to invoke martial law in order to redo the 2020 election; and tweeted that “Fear of Muslims is RATIONAL.” Flynn also previously supported the QAnon movement.
Along with Clay Clark, Flynn co-founded the pro-Trump ReAwaken America tour. Those events, which feature Eric Trump and other Trump allies, have repeatedly featured Hitler-promoting antisemites. (The tour has dropped those speakers after facing criticism.)
On the December 27, 2023, edition of The Alex Jones Show, Flynn appeared in-studio for a significant amount of time and praised his host. Clark also appeared on the program as a guest.
During a commentary about trusting the right people, Flynn spoke directly to Jones’ audience: “Alex has been bashed over the head for the better part of really 30 years, and I told Alex a couple of years ago when we met that I had first seen him in 2008 and 2009. I said, ‘That guy's absolutely right on the money.’ And here we are sitting here today in 2023, we're talking about the same issues — although they have exacerbated. So we have to really dig in. Do the research, listen to the right people.”
Shortly after Flynn’s endorsement, Jones characteristically argued that government-aligned entities are planning to stage false flags in order to spark a civil war: “They're going to stage false flags — unless we expose them and stop them — to blame us and trigger this. And they're going to make moves that they believe will elicit a civil war. This isn't coming. It's here. They are going to try this.”
Following Jones’ “false flags” warning, Flynn replied: “This is absolutely right.”
During the show, as Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights Executive Director Devin Burghart noted, Flynn also invoked violent imagery to prepare viewers for bloody conflict.
MIKE FLYNN: I don't raise my voice that much, but when I do, it means that we are moving to — as Alex just said — we're moving towards the sound of the guns here, folks. And the sound of the guns is freedom. We are going to move towards freedom.
In a December 2018 Washington Post profile about Flynn, a Defense Intelligence Agency officer said that when Flynn was leading the agency, he “started doing weird things, like bring[ing] his unsecured BlackBerry into the secure space.” Flynn “became unabashed about his beliefs,” the officer said, “In meetings, he sounded like he was reading Breitbart and Alex Jones and random bloggers, alt-right stuff, and he’d just say, ‘Well, I heard this . . .’ ”
Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.
