Retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn made his first public speech on Friday since striking a plea deal and he didn’t sound like a man who has turned on President Trump.
The former, and briefly tenured, White House national security adviser admitted guilt on Dec. 1 to one count of lying to the FBI. He promised to cooperate with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, a stipulation that stirred hope in liberal circles that he had incriminating Russia collusion testimony against Mr. Trump.
But at a campaign event in La Quinta, Calif., where he endorsed a Republican challenger in the 43rd District represented by Trump nemesis Rep. Maxine Waters, Mr. Flynn said, the president’s election was “a great thing for our country.”
Mr. Flynn delivered a speech endorsing and introducing Omar Navarro, who is running a second long-shot race against the entrenched 14-term Democratic congresswoman.
Mr. Navarro, a Torrance resident, has a criminal conviction. He pled guilty to a misdemeanor for attaching a tracking device to his wife’s car, the Daily Breeze reported.
Mr. Flynn first touched on his recent history in politics, then unleashed an attack on the destructive force of modern liberalism before lauding Mr. Navarro, the product of Cuban and Mexican ancestors.
“I saw a passion in the eyes of Omar,” he said of the candidate whom he met at last month’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) outside Washington.
His son, Michael Flynn Jr., posted the speech video online.
Mr. Flynn has said he was fired by President Barack Obama as the military’s top intelligence officer over differences on how to combat radical Islam.
On Friday, he explained his decision to enter politics as an adviser to candidate Trump by saying, “My passion and my destiny changed when I saw our country taking a fundamentally different direction in a world filled with challenges and challengers. … If I’m paying the price for that decision so be it. God can and will judge me at some point.”
He then talked about Mr. Trump’s historic upset win over Democrat Hillary Clinton.
“I got involved in the national political process to help our country get a president elected. All of us are imperfect. I used to introduce our current president …. during our various campaign stops as an imperfect candidate. Clearly he is a non-traditional politician. But his ’Make America Great Again’ philosophy it energized the country enough to get him overwhelmingly electe. … I still believe standing up here today this was a great thing for our country.”
He said that if you get knocked down then “get right back up, shake it off and get right back into the fight. … Make every single day count.”
He said the words “liberal” and “progressive” “sound like it’s really cool but it really isn’t.”
“They have trained a generation of young people to remain poor while blaming the rich, to remain unemployed while blaming those with jobs. … Blame, blame, blame. What a miserable existence.”
Mr. Flynn pled guilty for telling his FBI interrogator that he did not talk about sanctions or an upcoming United Nations vote in two phone conservations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. The FBI had the ambassador under routine surveillance. The tape showed that the two did talk about those subjects during the presidential transition.
Some conservative pundits have theorized that Mr. Flynn’s guilty plea could be thrown out due to FBI misconduct. But there has been no confirmation from his legal team. He is due to be sentenced this spring and faces a five-year maximum prison sentence.
Michael Flynn Jr.’s Twitter profile includes the slogan, “Truth Will Prevail.”
• Rowan Scarborough can be reached at rscarborough@washingtontimes.com.
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