Former national security adviser and QAnon celebrity Michael Flynn—who urged former President Donald Trump to declare martial law rather than accept his defeat by President Joe Biden—was promoted on Monday’s episode of “Chris Farrell’s On Watch,” a podcast produced by the right-wing communications and legal shop Judicial Watch. While Flynn charged that the Biden administration is “destroying every aspect of who we are as a democracy, as a constitutional republic,” Judicial Watch’s Chris Farrell gushed over Flynn, describing him as “one of the most lied-about public figures in America.”
During the wide-ranging conversation, Flynn accused the Biden administration of trying to move the U.S. “toward a state of communism or Marxism or some level of fascism, but a federal government that controls our lives.” Flynn denounced “forced socialism experiments that are happening inside of the government, inside of the Department of Defense,” citing the so-called “forced business about critical race theory” and “forced transgenderism” as examples.
Flynn called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “shrewd strategist” and said that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could have been avoided “if we had serious statesmen.” He said the U.S. should not be “fueling” the war by providing defensive weapons to Ukraine, adding that the only solution was for Ukraine to commit to neutrality between NATO and Russia.
Flynn talked briefly about some of his current political activities with America’s Future and the America Project, which he said is focusing on “election integrity” efforts and get-out-the-vote initiatives in nine states this year. He said he hoped this year’s primaries have the largest turnout in history. Flynn has a record of endorsing MAGA candidates in GOP primaries, including unsuccessful Virginia gubernatorial candidate Amanda Chase and current Oklahoma Senate challenger Jackson Lahmeyer.
Flynn, who has aggressively promoted Trump’s stolen-election lies, spoke at a Washington, D.C., rally on the eve of the Capitol insurrection, where he declared, “We should not accept this.” Last May, Flynn told a cheering crowd at the “For God & Country Patriot Roundup” conference in Dallas, Texas, that a Myanmar-style coup “should” happen in the U.S., though he later claimed he had not called for a coup.
Flynn, who has also promoted QAnon conspiracy theories, has been participating in the “ReAwaken America” tour, a traveling road show that combines Christian nationalism, stolen-election, and COVID-19 conspiracies with denunciations of the “deep state” and the Biden administration. Speaking at a ReAwaken America event held at a San Antonio, Texas, church last fall, Flynn declared, “If we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one religion. One nation under God, and one religion under God.” Like many Christian nationalist activists, Flynn describes politics in the U.S. as spiritual warfare; at a Lahmeyer campaign rally earlier this month, he described House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as a “demon.”
Flynn served briefly as Trump’s national security adviser. He later pled guilty to lying to the FBI about talking to the Russian ambassador to the U.S. before Trump took office. Trump later pardoned Flynn, and his supporters now describe his downfall as a smear orchestrated by deep state operatives.
In the MAGA world, “Flynn is probably the single greatest draw besides Trump himself,” Robert Draper wrote in in the New York Times Magazine in February.
