Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn on Thursday said Donald Trump does have “enormous respect” for U.S. military leadership, while also backing up Mr. Trump’s comments Wednesday evening that he didn’t see great body language from intelligence officials in recent briefings.
“Donald Trump has enormous respect for our military - has enormous respect for our military leadership,” Mr. Flynn, a Trump supporter, said on NBC’s “Today” program.
“What has happened is that our leadership in the military, in the armed forces right now - there’s a lot of frustration because of the policies that we are following and the strategy that we’re following, particularly against ISIS, but also what we’re doing out in the South China Sea, what we’re doing in Korea, what we’re doing in eastern Europe,” Mr. Flynn said.
At a Wednesday forum hosted by NBC and Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), Mr. Trump said that U.S. generals under President Obama and Hillary Clinton have been “reduced to rubble.”
Mr. Flynn also backed up Mr. Trump’s saying that the body language from intelligence officials in briefings he’s received indicated they weren’t happy.
“Without getting into the details of what we talked about, intelligence professionals brief the intelligence that they see going on around the world,” Mr. Flynn said. “They do not make the policy decisions.”
“So the intelligence that we’ve received in the last two briefings were in stark contrast to the policy decisions that are being made,” he said.
“Donald Trump, in a very, very sophisticated way, was asking tough questions and they would back off and say, that is not our job. Those are policy decisions that, in this case, the White House is making,” he said.
“And we would sit there and go OK - we understand. Stark contrast,” he said.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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