Retired Lt. General Michael Flynn, a senior adviser to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, was a guest on Friday’s Breitbart News Daily, where SiriusXM host Matt Boyle asked why a number of longtime Democrats, including Flynn himself, are supporting Donald Trump for president.
“First of all, I think Donald Trump is the leader that our country needs right now,” Flynn declared. “We have such a deficit of leadership in this country.”
“On the question of the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party talks about this progressive movement, actually they’ve been talking about it for a long time,” he continued. “All ‘progressive’ is, it’s a politically correct term for socialism.”
Flynn explained why some lifelong Democrats have grown disillusioned with the progressive vision:
As a kid growing up in a small town up in the state of Rhode Island, which is about 99 percent Democrat, I can tell you there’s a lot of people up in my hometown that are lifelong Democrats, that are whispering to me, “Hey, I’m voting for Trump.”
I think that there is such a movement in this country right now, away from the nonsense of what we see in this quote-unquote “progressive” movement, towards what I think people really want, is leadership, and that’s what Donald Trump offers. He offers a big strategic vision.
And in his statement “Make America Great Again,” that is essentially the essence of what people want. They want this country to be the world leader, to be seen and not be embarrassed by what’s going on, particularly what’s going on in recent days in places like Charlotte, and these attacks in New York, and New Jersey, and Minnesota. I mean, my God, how much do we have to put up with?
And frankly, the Democrats have really caused our country to go in a direction that it’s unrecognizable to me.
Boyle asked what Flynn would say to prospective “Trumpocrats” on the fence about voting for Trump instead of Hillary Clinton, perhaps intimidated by the social stigma attached to such a defection. Flynn said the big differences between the two were leadership, as he already discussed, and “accountability and responsibility”:
Donald Trump is a guy who takes responsibility for all of his actions. Over his many, many years of creating, really, a great company, he has signed more paychecks on the front than Hillary Clinton has ever. I mean, she signs paychecks on the back. He signs them on the front.
Donald Trump takes responsibility for the things he does. He has built organizations. He has tapped into a deeply underappreciated segment of America – a large segment, millions and millions, tens of millions of people, that feel underappreciated by the bubble of Washington, D.C.
Hillary Clinton represents three, maybe four decades of the status quo that our country has had. And look at what we ended up with. Look at what we have right now. I mean, there’s so many negatives because of the political class of this system, and we need enormous change.
That’s what this election represents. This is a change election. Donald Trump is a leader that has stepped into the role, and I’m telling you, our country is lucky that he has stepped in it.
So for the Trumpocrats, or for, really, independents and anybody else that’s out there listening, I would tell you, take a hard look if you haven’t decided yet. I will tell you, Donald Trump is not about just the next four years. This is not what Donald Trump believes in. Donald Trump is about the next forty, or about the next four hundred years.
This country has got to get back on a track of economic development, economic improvement. We’ve got to get our national security back in tack. We have got to get ourselves back on the podium, or the dais, where we’re getting a gold medal.
This is about leadership, American leadership and American patriotism that has to be returned to who we are, and what we are as a country. We should not be afraid of what our country was built upon, which is our Constitution, a Judeo-Christian set of principles and values and law. My God, the rule of law, the breakdown of the rule of law, and you have people like Hillary Clinton that is supporting these groups that are attacking our rule of law.
I’m on my soapbox right now, and I’m sorry, but you’re gonna see, and you’re gonna hear, words like, “Donald Trump’s dangerous,” “Donald Trump’s a racist.” But you know who the racists are? The racists are those in the progressive movement. The dangerous elements are those in the progressive movement, those that want to change this country into something that it is not, something that it was never created to be.
And Donald Trump sees that. I see that. Let me tell you, millions, millions and millions, of Americans see that for what it is. And that’s why I think that people are coming over to sort of the Trump Train, or the Trumpocrat Machine, or whatever you want to call it–because we need to get leadership back into the White House. We have such a deficit right now, and it’s a real tragedy for our country.
Boyle quoted Andrew Stein, former New York City Council president and eminent Trumpocrat, who explained in a Wall Street Journal op-ed this week, why he would be voting Republican for the first time:
Donald Trump is no racist. On the contrary, he offers the best hope for rebuilding our inner cities, and creating better education and jobs for those trapped in poverty, and lacking hope. When a hurricane devastated Puerto Rico in 1984, I asked Mr. Trump to provide a 727 airliner to bring critical supplies to the island. He did so and without publicity. I asked him to rebuild the Wollman Skating Rink in Central Park because the city couldn’t complete it in 10 years. Mr. Trump did it in under six months and under budget.”
Flynn agreed with Boyle that Stein’s testimonial painted Trump as a “post-partisan who is just about solving problems.”
“Thank you for highlighting what’s written in some of these other media outlets because the American public would never hear about them,” said Flynn. “They’ll never hear about them unless you guys talk about them, unless your station talks about them, honest to God–because some of this stuff gets hidden.” Flynn concluded, “The mainstream media will take stories like that and never, never talk about them, and that’s a disservice to the American public.”
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.
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