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FEW AMERICANS HAVE DONE MORE to mainstream conspiracy theories than Michael Flynn, the retired Army general who served as national security advisor for the first few days of Donald Trump’s first term. After being indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Flynn became a martyr for the MAGA right. QAnon believers, in particular, came to revere him—a reverence that Flynn eventually embraced.
Flynn posted a video of himself and his family members taking the QAnon oath, and appeared at a QAnon convention, where he helped auction off items like a QAnon quilt. He did all that, it’s worth noting, despite privately saying that the conspiracy theory was “total nonsense.”
But now, after having spent years fanning political conspiracies, Flynn finds himself the victim of one: a yarn weaved by a group of Trump supporters that Flynn’s family and associates actually orchestrated the January 6th attacks on the Capitol.
It’s gotten bad enough that Flynn has urged them to stop, saying his family wants to be left alone.
“Speaking for myself, the Flynn Family is done being a f’ing pin cushion for the mob,” Flynn posted on X on April 17.
Flynn didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The conspiracy theory currently targeting the Flynns revolves around Earl Matthews, a former lawyer for the D.C. National Guard who’s been nominated to be the Pentagon’s general counsel.
While Matthews is a Trump supporter, his beef with the Flynn family dates back to late 2021, when he filed a whistleblower complaint claiming that Flynn’s younger brother, then-Lt. Gen. Charles Flynn, lied to Congress about the military’s handling of January 6th—specifically, a meeting about how the military should respond to the riot in which the younger Flynn participated as the Army’s deputy chief of staff for operations. Charles Flynn retired from the Army as a full general last year.
When Matthews first filed his report, some QAnon influencers embraced his claims. Some of the most prominent were the hosts of the popular, Q-friendly “MG Show,” who have fallen out with Michael Flynn after years of internal QAnon feuds. As they saw it, Matthews had provided proof that the Flynn family somehow conspired with other figures like the Proud Boys to lead unwitting grassroots Trump supporters into a trap on January 6th.
That’s a big change for QAnon’s treatment of Flynn. Roy Davis, a QAnon clue “decoder” who dedicated a book about the conspiracy theory to Flynn, said Flynn and his associates—dubbed the “Flynnstones” by believers—were once heroes to Q theorists.
“Flynn was always painted in a good light,” said Davis, who still supports Flynn.
Flynn’s supposed reasons for tricking Trump supporters into committing major felonies remain unclear. Matthews’s complaint largely boiled down to an internal Defense Department dispute about who was to blame for the slow military response to the riot.
The 2023 complaint may have passed largely unnoticed if not for right-wing activist Laura Loomer. This month, fresh off successfully recommending a purge of the National Security Council, Loomer targeted Matthews for alleged disloyalty to Trump. In an April 9 post on social media, Matthews shot back that Loomer herself was working on behalf of shadowy forces who were out to undermine Trump—“only doing what others have asked her to do,” he exclaimed.
Then Matthews ramped it up, in a way that’s pretty wild for a guy who’s still awaiting confirmation to be the top lawyer at the Defense Department. On X, he reposted an “MG Show” episode alleging that Flynn and other supposed January 6th schemers were panicking over his nomination.
Then, even stranger, he reposted a rap song from an X user named “Captain Chaos” about the “Flynn network.” The song, which comes with a blurry AI-generated picture of what appears to be Matthews, takes shots at a wide range of pro-Trump personalities for supposedly covering up the “truth” about January 6th. It portrays Flynn as the mastermind of a plot against Trump.
“Michael Flynn’s crew, they playing it slick,” the song goes, adding, “Earl’s truth cuts deep, exposing their sins.”
The song includes several more jabs at Flynn, with verses about how the “Flynn network” is “nervous,” “shook,” and has “nowhere to hide.”
Like the rest of the “Flynn network” conspiracy theory, the song doesn’t explain why Flynn would concoct these schemes. Instead, it points to Flynn’s real ties to various far-right Trump world figures, and just implies an anti-Trump plot to orchestrate the January 6th riot.
Matthews’s embrace of the unsettling rap irritated Flynn’s MAGA allies. On X, right-wing media figure Jack Posobiec asked why Matthews was “attacking a patriot like Gen. Flynn?”
As you might imagine, Flynn himself has been less than thrilled to be accused of being an anti-Trump operative. He responded, predictably enough, by posting a conspiracy theory of his own on social media, asking whether the rap’s creator made the hip-hop song as a distraction to somehow benefit China.
TWO DAYS AFTER A LISTLESS White House Correspondents’ Dinner, the Trump administration unveiled a sort of shadow White House press corps crafted in its own image.
Instead of reporters, this group was stocked with MAGA influencers. And, surprise!—they all had really friendly questions for Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.
“It’s so great to see you!” Leavitt said at the inaugural “new media briefing” Monday.
Trump officials have been excessively cozy with social-media influencers, frequently inviting them to the White House to interview cabinet officials and creating a “new media seat” at the regular press briefing. But this latest “briefing” seemed like a test run for something bigger—perhaps a chance to ditch the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room entirely, or at least diminish it further.
So who made the president’s list of favorite influencers?
The White House didn’t get back to me with a list of the ten attendees. But through video footage and some reporting, I’ve been able to identify several of them.
Two of them were Texas conservative comedian Chad Prather and Rogan O’Handley, a sort of MAGA meme-guy who goes by the handle “DC Draino.” Both Prather and O’Handley participated in the “Epstein binders” debacle, when the Justice Department gave pro-Trump influencers a much-hyped set of Jeffrey Epstein documents that turned out mostly to contain information that was already public. So it’s no surprise that they landed on the invite list.
The list also included Emily Austin, an influencer and boxing reporter with more than 2 million Instagram followers, and Kambree Nelson, a right-wing Texas video personality. Incredibly, they were joined by Winston Marshall, a former banjoist for the band Mumford & Sons who now has a new career as a conservative podcaster.
Former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer was also there. The former Newsmax TV host (Spicer & Co. ended in 2023) even got to ask a question.
Perhaps the most interesting member of our new White House press corps is Arynne Wexler, a MAGA influencer with nearly 300,000 Instagram followers. Wexler is a chic urban Republican, and also very mean—or, as she put it in an appearance on Dave Rubin’s podcast, “if Joan Rivers and Ben Shapiro had a baby, then it would be me.”
Wexler’s not kidding about the Joan Rivers thing, even by the standards of the Trump movement. She has said liberal cities are populated by “androgynous, fat-nippled freaks,” a remark that alarmed even Rubin. She argues that we should bring back bullying in schools, at least in “healthy doses,” because bullying previously “kept people in check.”
Naturally, Wexler got to ask the first question at Monday’s briefing. She used it to praise Trump’s deportations.
“I can attest to the deportations in Florida,” she said. “My Uber drivers finally speak English again.”
Leavitt appeared to love the influencer briefing.
“I could go around the room all day!” she said in closing the meeting after less than thirty minutes.
But not everyone was pleased. Once more Loomer found herself irritated. The right-wing activist wasn’t invited on Monday and still hasn’t managed to get into the “new media seat” at the regular White House briefing.
On social media, Loomer ripped into the event, complaining that it was “so unserious” and that White House press staffers have an “irrational, deep seated animosity” against true MAGA influencers.
Great Job Will Sommer & the Team @ The Bulwark Source link for sharing this story.
