Flynn tenders his resignation.
I tend to be super-wary of pundits who say things like “the American people will do X” or “at some point, the American people will realize”, partly because phrases like that are cheap dodges, a way to hide your opinion behind an imaginary consensus, but mostly because it is impossible to guess what 330 million people are thinking. I don’t think there is an American opinion, and if I did, it was largely shattered in November.
That said, when a candidate who runs on his business acumen and ability to manage things and hire the best people loses top advisor after top advisor for being too close to Russia and lying about how close they are, it is possible the American people might realize he is an incredible clod and blow-dried fake.
There are really only two options when considering the resignation of Michael Flynn, who only spent a hair over three weeks as Trump’s Jack D. Ripper and was brought low by (possibly) lying about his communications with the Russian ambassador. One is to accept the narrative, which is that Flynn, a top advisor throughout the general election and one of Trump’s first hires, was working behind everyone’s back, and was criminally unreliable and rogue from the get-go. If that is the case, it speaks to an astonishing lack of vetting by Team Trump, a laziness that is part of his character, and a constitutional inability to judge people by any measure other than obsequious loyalty.
(And, if this is the case, if Flynn really went behind Trump’s back, it wasn’t even real loyalty: just flattery, which means Trump can’t spot a jackal if it coos sweet nothings to him.)
The other option is that Trump assembled a team that was deliberately close to Russia, for reasons of white supranationalism, or cruel geopolitics, or money, or whatever reason you prefer. They cozied up to Putin, and to global Putinism, because that is their kleptocratic vision of the world. The only problem came when it became too obvious, and the people who weren’t involved (Pence, maybe Priebus) tried to distance themselves when things started leaking.
This theory is backed by evidence, namely that Trump has been praising Putin since Day 1, even going so far as to compliment him for defying the US (at the exact same time Flynn was making the phone calls that would bring him down).
What’s going on was explained lucidly by a senior Pentagon intelligence official, who stated that “since January 20, we’ve assumed that the Kremlin has ears inside the SITROOM,” meaning the White House Situation Room, the 5,500 square-foot conference room in the West Wing where the president and his top staffers get intelligence briefings. “There’s not much the Russians don’t know at this point,” the official added in wry frustration.
Shooting Irrelevance 