The Mike Flynn I Know

By Michele R. Weslander Quaid

Michele R. Weslander Quaid and Lieutenant General Mike Flynn

Have you ever seen people in the news and wondered what they are really like? It’s hard to know, especially if the reports are from the hopelessly corrupt mainstream media. Michael “Mike” Flynn, LTG US Army (retired), has been prominent in the media.

He is coming to Santa Barbara for the Southern California premiere of the FLYNN movie on 19 April 2024, and I invite you to attend and discover for yourself what this talented and brave General is really like.

Those who have read my book, Change Your Stars: Live Your Purpose and Achieve Your Dreams, know that I worked with Mike during my national security career. We first met in 2005 when Major General Mike Flynn was the Director of Intelligence of Joint Special Operations Command under General Stan McChrystal to discuss their operational priorities before I flew their airlift into Afghanistan to support the special ops teams. Mike realized this was an unconventional war; it was a war for hearts and minds that required new tactics, techniques, and procedures.

We collaborated again when Mike was Director of Intelligence for the International Security Assistance Force and US and NATO forces in Afghanistan. Mike understood we needed to approach intelligence differently and published Fixing Intel: A Blueprint for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan without going through official DoD channels. Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence James Clapper was furious, and it was yours truly who screwed him out of the ceiling, stating that while the method of publication was unconventional, the content was accurate and an urgent call to action.

After Mike returned to the USA and was stationed with the Army G2 at the Pentagon, my husband, Lt. Col. Chris Quaid, USAF, invited Mike to speak to his operations group. Chris and I admired our fellow maverick and agent of positive change who defied the establishment and conventional way of doing things.

In 2012, Mike was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant General and became the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. When called to testify before Congress about worldwide threats alongside Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, CIA Director John Brennan, and FBI Director Chris Wray, LTG Mike Flynn boldly told the truth. That was when the unelected fourth branch of government – known as the “Deep State” – locked its sights on him.

Donald Trump then recruited Mike to be his National Security Advisor. A testament to his character, Mike’s entire family rallied to support him when the Obama administration targeted both him and Trump in Operation Crossfire Hurricane. The “Deep State” had to take Mike out because he was the biggest threat to their reign of power; he knew too much, recognized that our national security community had been corrupted and that we needed to seriously clean house in the US government, and had the courage to see it through.

A Democrat and a Man of Faith

When we worked together, I knew nothing of Mike’s faith or political leanings; most people in the military and national security community didn’t talk about such things. Reading his book Field of Fight: How to Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies, I learned that he was raised Catholic and joined his mom for pro-life rallies. He was a Democrat from a family of Democrats when Donald Trump recruited him.

When I considered running for US Congress in 2022, Mike encouraged me to do so and recorded his endorsement. We met briefly in California in March of that year, the day after my public campaign announcement, during his ReAwaken America Tour. We hadn’t seen each other in over a decade, but the common bond of love of liberty and service to our country remained.

While my daughter and I were in Florida for an event that summer, we spent a couple of hours with Mike at his office and had a heart-to-heart conversation. We shared insights and concerns, and marveled with great dismay how so many colleagues who had served during the Cold War had either adopted the collectivist ideology they fought against or were controlled by people who did. Though we’d both been through trials that might cause others to shrink from a fight, we were unwavering in our resolve to do everything we could to preserve our constitutional republic from destruction by enemies, both foreign and domestic.

The Battle of Our Lifetime is Underway

America’s founders understood tyranny and were thoughtful in constructing the US Constitution to restrict the Federal government's power and provide “We The People” the rights to enable us to protect ourselves from an unconstitutional government. President Eisenhower, one of only five 5-star generals, warned in his farewell address that, “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

We are at a time unprecedented since our country's founding, where people in government are violating their oaths of office, acting to enrich themselves, restricting individual liberty, and increasing their power and control over our lives. Will the USA survive to its 250th birthday or succumb to leftist, globalist, neo-Marxist ideologies and be destroyed from within? We must use our God-given rights enshrined in the USA’s founding documents to preserve liberty for future generations.

Mike loves liberty and the USA. He spent half his life serving our country in uniform in warzones and in an intransigent bureaucracy yet found ways to innovate to effect positive change for the good of America. Mike risked his life countless times to defend our freedom and recognizes this is the battle of our lifetimes. It pains me to hear people call him a traitor, for he is a God-fearing American patriot. As long as he breathes, he will fight to preserve liberty for his family and others.

We should all aspire to “fight like a Flynn.”

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I invite you to come meet my friend Mike Flynn and hear what he has to say in the movie and during the Q&A. You can get tickets here. He has an urgent message for Americans and the courage of his convictions to speak the truth no matter what the cost.

Michele R. Weslander Quaid, president of Sunesis Nexus, is an author, certified professional coach, consultant, and speaker with over 25 years of career experience in the national security community.