Trump reportedly fires Flynn's son for spreading fake news about Clinton

RT
Wed, 07 Dec 2016 13:16 UTC

© mflynnJR / Twitter

Michael G. Flynn

President-elect Donald Trump has reportedly fired a member of his transition staff for spreading a fake news story about an alleged child sex ring run by Hillary Clinton. The story led to an armed confrontation at a Washington DC pizzeria.

Michael G. Flynn, son of Trump's national security adviser choice Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, was let go by the president-elect on Tuesday, according to The New York Times.

Although it has not been officially confirmed what exactly led to Flynn's dismissal, the newspaper cited two Trump transition officials who said it had to do with his role in spreading a fake news story which alleged that Hillary Clinton was running a child sex ring from the backrooms of Comet Ping Pong restaurant in Washington DC, a story which has been dubbed 'Pizzagate.'

The fake news story led to a dangerous incident on Sunday, in which a man who believed the report began shooting inside the restaurant while "self-investigating" the situation. The story has also led to the restaurant's employees and other nearby business owners receiving death threats.

Just hours after the Sunday incident - and despite law enforcement confirming that there is no investigation taking place regarding any sort of child sex ring at the restaurant - Flynn took to Twitter to say that "until Pizzagate [is] proven to be false, it'll remain a story..."

Flynn's exact role in the transition team is a bit fuzzy. Despite reports that he had a team email address, Vice President-elect Mike Pence denied on Tuesday that Flynn had ever worked for the team, telling MSNBC's Morning Joe program that he had "no involvement in the transition whatsoever."

Transition spokesman Jason Miller, however, later contradicted Pence's statement, confirming that Flynn had worked for the transition team but that he was no longer involved.

Comment: Miller said, "The younger Michael Flynn was helping his father with some administration and scheduling duties early on in the transition process." Trump himself reportedly fired Flynn Jr., who had made tweets like the following:

But despite the dubiousness of many of the pizzagate claims, Flynn was also posting about other, better documented pedophile scandals:

Meanwhile, CBS News has reported that Flynn was not fired, but rather offered his resignation before he could be dismissed - possibly seconds before - after realizing that he had become a distraction.

Flynn's apparent sacking is the latest in an ongoing debate on how much fake news influenced the 2016 election, with US President Barack Obama expressing concern about its prevalence while speaking in Germany last month.

Comment: Before Flynn Jr.'s dismissal, Politico ran a report "Flynn under fire for fake news", alleging that Flynn Sr. posted "dubious factoids 16 times since Aug. 9" on his Twitter page, and embedding the suggestion that he is not fit for his post:

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.

Hilariously, they call the fact that Marina Abramovic invited the Podestas to an occult-tinged spirit-cooking party an "only slightly less outrageous hoax". Sorry, Politico, but you shot yourselves in the foot on that one. Whatever the merits of pizzagate, spirit cooking is an "in" thing for that crowd. And this quote from Adam Schiff (D.-Ca.) is just priceless:

"It is incumbent on Trump, his nominee for national security adviser, Gen. Flynn, and his entire team to disavow these falsehoods and conspiracy theories," Schiff said in a statement. "They will soon have a country to run, and God help us if they conduct the nation's affairs like their transition — without the willingness or ability to separate fact from fiction."

A better description of the Bush and Obama presidencies would be hard to come by... But there's also this to consider regarding the whole pizzagate phenomenon:

The former military officer who knows Flynn well suggested that his former boss may have a proclivity for misinformation because of his long career in secret intelligence. "He also fancies himself as someone who is skilled as manipulation of actual fact in order to affect movement downstream," the ex-officer said, recalling that the U.S. military strategy in Afghanistan included spreading false information through the media to see how it might affect the enemy.

"If this is another example of his willingness to manipulate information in order to have a specific end goal it would not be a complete departure, I suppose," the former officer said.

Like it or not, that's what spies do. Unfortunately, whereas the mainstream media is unanimous in their identification of pizzagate as "fake news", they're utter morons or complicit dupes when it comes to fake stories that really matter, like Iraq's WMDs or Assad's "chemical weapons attacks".