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Trump fires Michael Flynn

The dismissal of Michael Flynn as Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor last night raises some interesting questions, although the CNN report did not raise those that seem most important to me this morning. 

What prompted Flynn’s dismissal was his claim that he did not discuss conversations with Russian officials with Vice President Mike Pence after the November election; this raised questions about Flynn and the Trump relationship with Russia during the election, although this wasn’t discussed in the CNN report that I saw this morning.  

It is now clear that Flynn did discuss security issues with Russia; as National Security Advisor he would hardly have done so without the knowledge of President Trump, or so it would seem.  What does this say about American-Russian relations at the time of the November presidential election?

When I got up on the morning of November 11 my wife told me that Trump had been elected president, although Hillary Clinton had been considered the favored candidate for that office.  What happened?  There had been reports in the news of strange happenings that, I assumed, had been prompted by Russian sources.  Subsequent reports validated this contention; Russian sources dispensed information through American media that, it seemed to me, contributed to the election of Donald Trump as American president.  This was consistent with reports that Trump was on favorable terms with Russia; Russian secret sources dispensed information in America that helped Donald Trump become president of the United States. 

Hillary Clinton fell from the news almost instantly; the woman who was supposed to become the American president did not achieve that goal; the spotlight is now on Donald Trump and his political team.   Which no longer includes Michael Flynn.   In this narrative Russia seems to have played a critical role; we don’t know how it happened but it is hard for me to imagine that Vladimir Putin was outside the scenario.  The impact on America is already great; Trump has had to accept Russian complicity in events that surfaced at the time of the November 2016 election; American politics have changed immeasurably since Donald Trump was elected President.   

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