December 5, 2016

Republicans Need to Step Up and Get Gen. Michael Flynn Out of the White House

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You’ve probably heard that a gunman entered the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria in Washington DC yesterday and started shooting. He didn’t hit anyone, though, and it’s not clear if he was even trying. So why was he there? He says he was trying to “self investigate” an allegation that Bill and Hillary Clinton ran a pedophilia ring out of the restaurant.

No, this is not me being smug and elitist again this morning. This is an honest-to-goodness conspiracy theory known as Pizzagate, and it’s been making the rounds for a while. Why? Because the owner of Comet Ping Pong is both gay and a longtime supporter of the Democratic Party. And that’s not all!

It’s known, for instance that Bill Clinton and Donald Trump flew on the private plane of convicted child abuser Jeffery Epstein. Tony Podesta, the brother of the Clinton aide whose emails were hacked, was a friend of Dennis Hastert, a Republican politician who earlier this year was sentenced to 15 months in prison, and has admitted abusing boys. The Jimmy Savile scandal in the UK has featured in speculation as an example of a serial child abuser getting away with his crimes.

So far this has no connection to Donald Trump, and perhaps you’re thinking that’s another silver lining, aside from the fact that no one was hurt in the attack. But I’m afraid you’ll have to make do with only one silver lining today. You see, Gen. Michael Flynn, who will soon be Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor, tweeted this a few days before the election:

And that’s not all. Here is Michael Flynn Jr., who is not just Flynn’s son. He is also Flynn’s chief of staff and closest aide. Here he is yesterday, after the shooting:

There’s much more in Flynn Jr’s Twitter feed following this, all pointing in the same direction: he is a complete crackpot. And he is one of the closest confidantes of his father, who is also a crackpot. And Flynn Sr. is the top national security aide to Donald Trump, who is well known to have a weakness for conspiracy theories already.

Obviously Democrats have no influence over Donald Trump’s White House. But presumably Republicans do. They need to figure out a way to get Flynn booted from the NSA position and as far away from Trump as possible. This isn’t an amusing joke, and it’s not just politics anymore. It’s a serious national security weakness.

UPDATE: It’s hard to keep up these days. In the tweet at the top of this post, Flynn Sr. isn’t referring to Pizzagate. He’s referring to a different pedophilia allegation involving Hillary Clinton. According to Truepundit.com, it linked “Clinton herself” and her “associates” to money laundering, child exploitation, sex crimes with children, perjury, obstruction of justice, and “other felony crimes.”

I even wrote about it back when it happened. It’s been a busy two weeks since then. Sigh.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

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So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

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