November 21, 2016

In Trumpland, Nepotism Is the New Black

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Nick Kristof tells me something I didn’t know:

The announcement that Trump has recruited Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn as national security adviser is particularly alarming….Flynn had a brilliant military career….Then President Obama nominated Flynn to become director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and he began to unravel….Flynn’s former fans have been bewildered at his raging denunciation of Islam, including calling it a “cancer.” In February, Flynn also tweeted and asked others to forward a viciously bigoted video that argued that there could be no such thing as Islamophobia.

….For his chief of staff, Flynn chose his son, who is a looney on social media, calling President Obama a communist and fascist, tweeting racially insensitive comments and sharing absurd conspiracy theories.

The chief of staff for the National Security Council will be Flynn’s son? Well, why not? Donald Trump has set the tone on nepotism from the top, and it’s obvious that he not only tolerates it, but positively revels in it.

HERE ARE THE FACTS:

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ONE MORE QUICK THING:

Our fall fundraising drive is off to a rough start, and we very much need to raise $250,000 in the next couple of weeks. If you value the journalism you get from Mother Jones, please help us do it with a donation today.

As we wrote over the summer, traffic has been down at Mother Jones and a lot of sites with many people thinking news is less important now that Donald Trump is no longer president. But if you're reading this, you're not one of those people, and we're hoping we can rally support from folks like you who really get why our reporting matters right now. And that's how it's always worked: For 45 years now, a relatively small group of readers (compared to everyone we reach) who pitch in from time to time has allowed Mother Jones to do the type of journalism the moment demands and keep it free for everyone else.

Please pitch in with a donation during our fall fundraising drive if you can. We can't afford to come up short, and there's still a long way to go by November 5.

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