Trump adviser Michael T. Flynn on his dinner with Putin and why Russia Today is just like CNNThe Washington Post’s Dana Priest recently interviewed retired Lt. Flynn twice — once in person, once by phone — and conducted follow- up email exchanges. The following is a condensed transcript of the in- person interview. For more on Flynn: He was one of the most respected intel officers of his generation. Now he’s leading . Was it your idea to become more public? MICHAEL FLYNN: I consciously made a decision once I felt the country was at such risk and I was advising five of the candidates running for president. They all reached out to me . Some of them I met with more often. ![]() ![]() Two of them, I was advising right up to the time when the decision was made, when Trump won the primary. PRIEST: So you were advising both of them? FLYNN: Yes, and everyone knew, I wasn’t secretly advising . Someone would ask me for advice on something, or if I saw something I thought was important I would share it with them. PRIEST: How did you meet Trump in particular? FLYNN: I got a phone call from his team.
![]() They asked if he would be willing meet with Mr. Trump and I did. Very serious guy. ![]() Good listener. Asked really good questions. Was very serious about running. And this was all before, really, the primaries kicked in. We were going to meet for 3. ![]() ![]() UEFA and Pogba support landmine victims in Afghanistan. For the tenth consecutive year, UEFA has set aside The weather is officially hot and sticky—but that doesn't mean your beauty routine needs to be a mess. Just avoid these missteps. Alé de Basseville. Donald Trump thinks his wife will be a model first lady — and here’s the. His son Eric came in. He was really good. PRIEST: Do you remember anything in particular that struck you about him the first time you met him? FLYNN: I think his view of the world and his view of where America was, and where it needed to be. I got the impression this was not a guy who was worried about Donald Trump, but a guy worried about the country. I don’t think people can BS me that easily, and I was sort of looking for that. I found him to be in line with what I believed. Once again the remake train derails into another franchise with Ghostbusters, the 2016 comedy that seems to be made by people who have never seen the original film.PRIEST: Do you talk with Trump directly now? FLYNN: I have. But he’s a pretty busy guy. PRIEST: Is there a group of national security advisers or generals . A lot of what I was doing . That was a disservice to the American public. They keep going back to this decision to kill bin Laden. What did it do, what did it really do? Quit touting that you killed bin Laden. All you did is made him a martyr. They’re using him for propaganda. I would have preferred to capture the guy and expose how he uses Islamic ideology for his own purposes. Now he’s leading . There has been a lot in the news about your trips . I went there on a fully approved trip. I had a great trip. I was the first U. S. I was able to brief their entire staff. I gave them a leadership OPD. I was visiting some of our key attach. People say because of . So when people go, “Ukraine and Russia is bad,” but at the same time we’re sitting down with Russia on giving the lead state sponsor of terror a pathway to a nuclear bomb and $1. PRIEST: You saw the relationship with Russia as potentially good for the U. S.? FLYNN: No. I saw the relation with Russia as necessary to the U. S., for the interests of the U. S. We worked very closely with them on the Sochi Olympics. We were working closely with them on the Iranian nuclear deal. We beat Hitler because of our relationship with the Russians, so anybody that looks on it as anything but a relationship that’s required for mutual supporting interests, including ISIS, . We have a problem with radical Islamism and I actually think that we could work together with them against this enemy. They have a worse problem than we do. PRIEST: Tell me about the RT . I do public speaking. It was in Russia. It was a paid speaking opportunity. I get paid so much. The speaker’s bureau got paid so much, based on our contract. PRIEST: Can you tell me how much you got for that? FLYNN: No. PRIEST: No? Because you don’t want to get your fees out there? FLYNN: Yeah, I don’t. PRIEST: What was the gig? FLYNN: The gig was to do an interview with . It was an interview in front of the forum, probably 2. My purpose there was I was asked to talk about radical Islam in the Middle East. They asked me to talk about what was going on in the situation unfolding in the Middle East. The statement that I made was actually: “Russia ought to get Iran to back out of the proxy wars they are involved in,” to include Syria, so we, the rest of the international community, could settle this situation down. PRIEST: Have you appeared on RT regularly? FLYNN: I appear on Al Jazeera, Skye New Arabia, RT. I don’t get paid a dime. I have no media contracts. You’re rolling your eyes. FLYNN: Well, what’s MSNBC? I mean, come on ? What’s Sky News Arabia? I have been asked by multiple organizations to be a . I want to be able to speak freely about what I believe. Read my book. You’ll see what I say about Russia. PRIEST: Let me ask about sitting next to Putin . I didn’t have any problem. What I’m looking for is to make sure, in my view, I see a country that has lost respect for another country and if I have any sort of fiber in my body where I can help out to make sure they understand that we have people in our country who aren’t going to apologize for who we are. We’re not going to act in a soft way for what we believe needs to be done. I was very adamant about what I said. He knows exactly what I said. PRIEST: Did you talk to him personally? FLYNN: No, just introduction. That’s it. PRIEST: The seating arrangements? You didn’t ask to sit by him? FLYNN: Nope. I was one of the guests there. I found it a great learning opportunity. One of the things I learned was that Putin has no respect for the United States leadership. Not for the United States, but the leadership. PRIEST: How did you learn that? FLYNN: I just learned it from the conversations and the way questions were asked and the discussions I was part of. I’m arguing for the United States and I found myself with people wondering what’s going on with the U. S. But it’s hard when they don’t have any respect for the current leadership. PRIEST: To broaden the discussion on the Russia question a little bit, there’s ? I’m trying to just get it out there on the table. FLYNN: You know what? I don’t know what their business interests are. I’ve talked with Paul Manafort, met him, but if Carter Page walked in here, I wouldn’t know who he is ? Look at the amount of money the Global Clinton Initiative is taking from countries right now. PRIEST: And what do you make of that? FLYNN: It’s an incredible level of corruption. And talk about speaking out of both sides of your mouths and this whole business about women’s rights, some of these countries there are no rights for women. Why do we take a dollar? Why do we give a dollar to countries that have no rights for women? We have to think about that. PRIEST: When you were in uniform, can you give me an example of something you saw having to do with Obama and Clinton that really turned you? FLYNN: Libya. Indecision or the dumb decision. What are you doing? PRIEST: When you were in JSOC . We were still at war essentially. Then I went to Central Command and Bush was still in charge, then joint staff . The intelligence was very clear, still is. PRIEST: What would you have wanted the strategy to be? FLYNN: I would want this enemy to be clearly defined by this president and he just refused to do it. This is not about countering violence extremist movements, the “CVE,” this is about going after an ideology that is within the Islamic world that is like a metastasized cancer that has grown and this president has been presented that information, routinely, often, and has been shown this enemy for what it is and still refuses to call it for what it is, and until you do, you really can’t have a coherent strategy. This president has left this strategy, and Bush didn’t do any better, he’s sort of left this strategy up to the military and up to the intelligence community, primarily the CIA. That’s not a strategy. PRIEST: Part of your strategy, you’ve said, is to work with partners in the Middle East, but you’ve also said on Al Jazeera, “We invest too much in conflict and not enough in stability. What does that mean to you? FLYNN: Let me give you an example. So what are we doing in Libya? We just dropped some bombs on someone who we found is a leader there, maybe we killed some group attending a leadership meeting. Does this mean the problem is going to go away? It means were going to have worse guys. That’s an investment in more conflict instead of actually saying, okay, maybe what we ought to do is . How would we do that? These are all bilateral arrangements where we work with the Saudis, we work with the Qataris, maybe, the Jordanians, maybe. We work with the Egyptians, not really. PRIEST: How would you see a President Trump bringing the Arab states back to the table? FLYNN: It has to be a totally different conversation. It has to be one based on respect and acknowledging that there is a cost for not doing that. There is a cost. PRIEST: Continued war? FLYNN: It’s like NATO. Why do three- quarters of NATO ? They have to pay their bills. We’ve done a lot, for the better part of half a century, for these countries. I personally think we have to embrace this notion that President al- Sissi of Egypt said; he called for a revolution in Islam. PRIEST: How do we do that? FLYNN: Help them. That’s the conversation I would like to have. How do we help you do that? You, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Arab world. We are not going to get any help out of Iran, even though we gave them the best deal of their lives. We should depend on some of these other Arab leaders to help out. PRIEST: Do you think Trump is going to have a problem with that, though, because of the interpretation of many people that he’s anti- Islam, that he’s anti- Muslim? FLYNN: No he’s not. What did he say? PRIEST: What he said about stopping immigration from Muslim countries. FLYNN: Certain Muslim countries, and we have to understand where they’re coming from and what they’re doing . Look what’s happening in our country. PRIEST: But you’ve got a whole list . Why doesn’t Saudi Arabia take more. Egypt can’t afford it right now. Egypt is going to be, potentially, a failed state if we don’t help them.
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