President Trump reportedly expressed regret over firing former national security adviser Michael Flynn two days after doing so.
President Trump reportedly expressed regret over firing former national security adviser Michael Flynn two days after doing so. According to Politico, during that time in February, he “told several aides and friends he should have kept him instead.”
The report appears to be corroborated by a New York Times story from last week which described some of the president’s complaints about the new national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster. The piece states that Trump “still openly laments having to dismiss Mr. Flynn.”
The Politico report goes on to say that “one adviser close to Trump said he’s heard Trump defend the general using the exact words described in reports of memos written by former FBI director James Comey recording his conversations with the president — and that Trump has told people inside the White House he wished the investigation would go away.”
The Times reported last week in a separate story that Comey had documented the details of a conversation he had with Trump a day after Flynn’s departure; he quoted the president as saying, “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”
Even after Flynn’s dismissal, which was prompted by allegations that he had not been fully honest to Vice President Mike Pence about his contacts with Russia, Trump has continued to speak highly of him.
Days after Flynn vacated his post, the president said, “Gen. Flynn is a wonderful man. I think he has been treated very, very unfairly by the media, as I call it, the fake media in many cases. And I think it is really a sad thing that he was treated so badly.”
And Trump told NBC’s Lester Holt in a recent interview, “This man [Flynn] has served for many years, he's a general, he's a — in my opinion — a very good person.”
As for why Trump continues to defend Flynn, according to Politico, “A White House spokesman said Trump cares about loyalty and doesn’t like seeing people close to him come under criticism.”
