Recently, Stream Senior Editor John Zmirak wrote an early review for the new documentary Flynn — a powerful film about a name you know you know. However, the news didn’t stop there: Zmirak also had the opportunity to shake hands with him last Wednesday when the Flynn Live Tour stopped in Bedford, Texas. Here’s the photographic proof.

 

Before Zmirak met the decorated war hero, The Stream had the opportunity to sit down with General Michael Flynn to ask him questions about his story of family and the truth.

Transcript cleaned up from audio for clarity.

Gayle McQueary: Disinformation and misinformation are real buzzwords nowadays, especially whenever it comes to the news. In your film, you talk about assassination through narrative. Are these things correlated?  

Michael Flynn: Well, you know, disinformation, misinformation, and malinformation can come down to two words — facts or lies, or you could say truth or lies. So if something is true, like if our elections are fraudulent and I say that our elections are fraudulent, and [the media says], ‘That’s misinformation. There’s no evidence’ — well, there’s plenty of evidence that our elections are fraudulent.

If I was to say, ‘I deny that we have elections,’ that would be the literal definition of an election denier. Right? I’ve been called that. I don’t deny [we have] elections. I deny that we have fair elections. So they would say that’s misinformation, there’s no evidence. But there’s a ton of evidence.

GM: Right.

MF: So they’re going to use words, the left and communists use words all the time. And they are very smart, and they’re very well coordinated, and they parrot across the board because they get the word out. And we end up finding ourselves on our heels, constantly defending ourselves.

One of the first rules for countering radicals is never apologize. Don’t apologize for telling the truth. Don’t apologize for saying something that you believe to be true. You know? And let somebody dispute it. And even after they dispute it, you might still say, ‘I still don’t believe it. I still believe this to be true.’

It’s like [the old adage of beauty is] in the eye of the beholder. [Take] a piece of artwork. I look at [it] and I say “piece of junk.” You look at it and say “work of art.” So facts, lies, truth, lies. They are going to put definitions to misinformation and disinformation. The government will do this, and when they do that, they will then box in free speech. And once they box in free speech, that is another attack on our rights, because they clearly — although they’re going to try again — they clearly can’t get rid of the Second Amendment.

And they really have a difficult time with the First Amendment. So they’re going to try to limit the First Amendment by creating words that can box people in so everybody’s afraid to say something. If I say elections are totally fraudulent, I don’t believe our elections are fair at all. All right? So the government will say — especially [to] a guy like me, “You’re spewing misinformation. There’s no evidence that we have widespread widespread fraud.”

So what’s widespread fraud is one vote from somebody who’s dead. Is that widespread enough, that one vote came in from somebody who is known to be dead? So is that misinformation, or disinformation? Is that a lie or is that a fact? We know that’s a fact because there are there are votes that have been counted from people who are dead. So how many dead people have voted? At what point do we say one is too many?

Here we are a couple of days here before Memorial Day weekend, where we were supposed to celebrate the sacrifice of soldiers who have died on the battlefields for this country. So if they sacrifice, why should we count a vote of one dead person?

What I just said, those are factual statements, but the government is going to create these definitions and the Left will beat us about the head and shoulders and try to shut down free speech. And most Americans will keep their mouths shut because most Americans are afraid.

GM: That actually brings up a good point for our audience at The Stream. Most of our audience want to get involved because they do believe in the Constitution and what it stands for. They are proud of our military fighting. Is there anything that you could say to them to encourage them to keep going?

MF: Yeah. If they want to call me up and tell me they’re exhausted, please do. Okay? And I will straighten them up pretty quickly.

There are all kinds of people out there across the country, like Audit the Vote, Precinctstrategy.com, Moms for America, Women Fighting for America, Citizens Defending Freedom. These are all organizations that for the most part are nonprofit organizations. America’s Future is the one I run, and that particular one has to do with child sex trafficking. We’re going as hard as we can to try to put a dent in that problem.

So it just depends on what people want to do. If they want to help with politics, if they want to help with elections, there are a ton of places they can go look at. I just mentioned a few legitimate organizations that are actually doing very good work for this country at a very, very local level.

These are not people that are wandering around Washington, D.C., trying to get somebody to recognize them. These are people that are going around this country and doing good things at local level. And so I think anybody that sits here and says, “I don’t know what to do” — I can’t help them.

I really can’t at this point. We don’t have that much time. If you don’t know what to do, I need to go find somebody who’s willing to do something. That doesn’t mean I don’t have compassion or sympathy for somebody who’s sitting there and feels like they’re isolated, but go get engaged. Go get involved. I can’t emphasize that enough. This is it: We don’t have that many more days until we’re going to decide whether we’re going to continue to be this experiment in democracy called a constitutional republic, or whether we’re going to completely move down the road toward communism.

That’s where we’re heading. We’re actually on that road right now because we don’t control the levers of power; the communists do. The fact that I’m going around this country and talking the way I’m talking — at a certain point in time, maybe a year from now, if they stay in power, these kinds of things they won’t allow happen.

They’ll come and shut guys like me down. They’ll come and arrest me, and they’ll take me in for questioning, and I’ll get a lawyer and I’ll fight it. And maybe they won’t let me go. Maybe they won’t get let me get a lawyer. They don’t, you know — they do that to people now. Right?

GM: Yes.

MF: Just look at some of the some of the J6 cases.

GM: The government went after your son to get to you, and you pled guilty to protect him. That’s straight out of John 15:13. What was sacrificing yourself like for you?

MF: There’s even more to it than people know from what you can portray in a two-hour movie. It’s like somebody who reads your bio to try to introduce you, but it’s a bio that’s like five sentences. [The filmmakers are] trying to take 40 years of somebody’s life and career, to get it knocked into like three or four sentences.

My wife is very clear in the part of the discussion where she talks about [how] you make decisions based on what you’re faced with. Like when you’re faced with a tragedy, I might be able to help you.

We didn’t have a lot of help. We didn’t. We really didn’t. We had our each other and we had our family. But even then, I had to be very careful about what I even told my family because of these animals that we were facing. I used that word, “animals,” very precisely.

It’s really difficult because knowing what we knew and the state of play of where my son Michael was, it’s actually a very easy decision for me. It was monumental, you know? I understood the gravity of it. I was willing to accept the consequences.

The animals that we were facing, they have no soul. They have a heart, but it’s a dark heart. They definitely don’t have a soul. Because if one has a soul, that means you have a consciousness.

Consciousness is something that can tell the difference between what’s right and what’s wrong; what’s good and what’s evil. Well, these people have no soul because they don’t know the difference, and they don’t care about the difference. You can go through the whole litany of seven deadly sins, and some are actually more visible in some of these animals than others. Some of these deadly sins, ego being one. You had to be at that moment to understand it. I think that it was just a really, really difficult decision, but it was made easier with my wife and our faith in each other.

GM: Family is everything.

MF: Hmm, yes.

GM: God being in the center of that [family].  I was researching Michael’s case, your case having to do with [the] Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). And to this day haven’t seen charges against Hunter Biden brought up.

MF: Right, right. And he clearly violated that. We didn’t, we didn’t at all. We weren’t even close to it, but they used it (FARA). They used it in a very evil way. Hunter actually did violate it. He actually did work for a foreign government, a couple of foreign governments, and received massive benefits.

So did his father, the president of the United States. That’s not a conspiracy theory or misinformation. That’s very real and it’s provable, and it has been proven. It’s sad the state of the country with the weaponization of our justice system, and the lack of leadership that we have in Washington, DC.

That’s why I tell people don’t waste time worrying about what they’re going to do. They’re going to do nothing but continue to ruin this country because of their own greed. Focus on what you can control in your own home, in your town, in your community. I think if people do that, it gets back to the first thing you asked me about what people can do.

It’s super, super important that people reflect on that. You can’t do anything about what they’re doing in Washington, DC. Be my guest and complain about it, complain about it all day long, but also do something that you can control. Don’t worry about what you can’t do. It’s very simple, very simple guidance.

GM: Have you considered going back into federal politics again?

MF: I have, and I’ve been asked. Honestly, it is the last thing that I want to do. It really is. What I want to do right now is safely finish up this tour that we’re on. I will continue to promote this movie because I think every American needs to see it. It’s mind-boggling what our government would do to a person at the level that I got to with all my years of military service. Not just to me, but to my entire family.

GM: You were a civilian, you retired.

MF: Yeah. Now going back into service, I don’t know; sitting here with you today, my answer is I want nothing to do with it. Maybe I get a good night’s rest, I get up tomorrow morning, and say yeah.

I certainly would consider it. The environment has changed. The situation has changed. My life has dramatically changed. I’m doing what I’m doing and I’m going to keep doing it. I will because I believe so much in this country because of what I was given.

I do understand our Constitution, our freedoms. I understand sacrifice. I don’t think most Americans do. In fact, I would say that 90% of Americans don’t understand. That doesn’t mean that those 90% are dumb people. It just means that we have forgotten what all those things mean. We’ve taken for granted our freedom, we’ve taken for granted those who sacrifice, and we’ve taken for granted our Constitution. We just assume that these people in Washington, or whatever state capital you’re from, people are going to do the right thing. They stopped doing the right thing a long time ago, and we stopped paying attention a long time ago.

When [America] stopped paying attention they took advantage of us. [Then] we turned around and went, “What’s been going on here? We’ve got a mess.”

GM: What would you like people to take away from Flynn?

MF: I want them to ask the question after watching it: What are they willing to fight for?

[Think of it] like a marriage. A marriage has very difficult, rocky, rocky moments, and most people aren’t willing to fight to save it. Most people just let it go. If you made the decision to get married because you love someone, and then all of a sudden you have a couple of rocky times, a couple of arguments, are you going to give up, saying, “I’m getting a divorce”? Or are you willing to fight to keep that marriage going?

Now, if it’s an abusive relationship, physical abuse or even mental abuse, then there’s a different issue there. Now you’ve got to start to really reflect on whether or not one or the other made a poor call. You make a decision about getting out of that kind of abusive relationship, but that’s not the norm.

We’ve made it so easy in this country to get a divorce. I’m not saying I don’t like people who have been divorced. I’m not judging the people that have gone through that, because a lot of people [have] since we made it easy. I do believe people give up too easily.

They give up instead of saying, “Am I willing to fight for this relationship?” People say, “Well, we fell out of love.” Okay. Really? I’ve been in a in a long-term relationship, and it takes hard work to stay in a long relationship.

It’s not all rosy and wonderful. The big question out of this movie is, what are you willing to fight for? My family is the answer to that question for me. Just like I say in the movie, “If I was willing to die for my country, I’m certainly willing to die for my family.”

That’s why I would fight. Maybe my threshold of pain is different, but I think too many people allow themselves to not understand that they actually have a much stronger threshold than they really do.

I think people really, really need to strengthen themselves, and that sometimes you just walk away, go to a quiet place and say a prayer.