Dispatches from Trump's America: He was warned about Flynn, but Trump persisted

Here we are, several days after President Donald J. Trump's infuriatingly underwhelming "first 100 days," with a Chief Executive who hasn't matured into his job and his popularity still at world record lows. Unlike President Franklin D. Roosevelt's famous first 100-day period in 1933, Mr. Trump's first months in the White House will be remembered for his crass behavior toward Mexico and other countries, his insistence on building a $21 billion dollar wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, his constant use of Twitter to spout bits of Orwellian nonsense, the mean-spirited assault on President Obama's legacy, his bumbling attempts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, and, of course, Russiagate.

As hard as it is for Mr. Trump's devoted followers to accept, the 45th President of the United States has been an abject failure since his Inauguration nearly five months ago. His popularity, which was at record lows even before he took the Oath of Office on January 20, remains low among non-Republicans in the U.S. According to Gallup, the President's job approval rating is only at 40%, while the percentage of poll respondents who disapprove of Mr. Trump's performance is 53%.

One of the first signs of Mr. Trump's political ineptitude was his hiring of retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn as his first National Security Adviser. A decorated veteran of the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars (mostly as a staff or intelligence officer) and former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Gen. Flynn seemed to be an ideal pick for the National Security Adviser position....except for one thing. He was not. 

First off, Flynn's tenure as Director of the DIA ended badly. He was forced out of his job in 2014 after  fighting with his superiors at the Pentagon over his disorderly management style and lack of vision for the agency.  Flynn retired from the Army shortly after his resignation from the DIA, After that, he opened an intelligence consulting business with his son, Michael G. Flynn. He also peddled his services as an analyst for RT, the Russian government's English-language media outlet. Not only did he appear on RT on a semi-regular basis, but he also made some business connections with the kleptocrats in Moscow, some of them well-connected to President Vladimir Putin.

Although Flynn is a registered Democrat, it's not hard to see why then-candidate Trump chose him as his adviser for security affairs during the campaign. Per the New York Times:

Mr. Trump and General Flynn both see themselves as brash outsiders who hustled their way to the big time. They both post on Twitter often about their own successes, and they have both at times crossed the line into outright Islamophobia.

They also both exhibit a loose relationship with facts: General Flynn, for instance, has said that Shariah, or Islamic law, is spreading in the United States (it is not). His dubious assertions are so common that when he ran the Defense Intelligence Agency, subordinates came up with a name for the phenomenon: They called them “Flynn facts.”

So it should surprise no one, then, that when President-elect Trump was warned by President Obama that Gen. Flynn was a potential risk for blackmail by the Russians, he ignored the naysayers. Instead, he went on to name him to a sensitive post in his Administration - only to fire him a few weeks into his term. 

Now, a responsible President, no matter which political party he or she is loyal to, would have at least reconsidered such an important decision about a person with such an important job as National Security Adviser. Why didn't Mr. Trump take anyone's warnings about Gen. Flynn seriously?

According to an article in CNN by Chris Cillizza, there are three reasons why Mr. Trump ignored the warnings about the man at the heart of Russiagate:

First, both Trump and Flynn dislike former President Obama. Flynn sees his firing from the DIA as political payback for criticizing Obama's policies on Syria, Iran, and the Global War on Terror. Per Cillizza: 

There's no question that Trump, for all his insistence of how great he and Obama got along in their Nov. 10 meeting, viewed his election as a rejection of Obama's eight years in office. Taking Obama's advice on who to pick as one of his closest advisers would not be the sort of thing Trump would do.

Second, Trump is a big fan of loyalty, both personal and to any institution he is running. And, as Cillizza explains:

Not only was Flynn an early endorser of Trump, he was one of his most aggressive and effective surrogates. By the end of the campaign, Flynn was Trump's de facto hype man/lead introducer at rallies.

Trump doesn't forget that sort of loyalty. And he wants to reward it.

Third, Mr. Trump believes that his business acumen and gut instincts, ahem, trump advice given by political experts, former Presidents, and Washington insiders. Per Cillizza: 

The campaign he ran, to his mind, was an affirmation of his gut being smarter and better than all of the advice the so-called professionals were offering. After all, they said he had no chance to win!

Given that, why listen to all the voices telling him to get as far away from Flynn as possible? Why not, on the other hand, embrace Flynn as a symbol of the very outsider movement that elected him in the first place?

Sources:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/201617/gallup-daily-trump-job-approval.aspx
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/18/us/politics/michael-flynn-national-security-adviser-donald-trump.html?_r=0&module=ArrowsNav&contentCollection=Politics&action=keypress&region=FixedLeft&pgtype=article
http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/08/politics/flynn-trump-russia/