"An ally can turn...."
by digby
So I've been wondering about that weird comment Trump made to the coast guard in which he said " you never know about an ally – an ally can turn, you're about to see ...”
Has he ‘turned on me,’ the president wondered about his former national security adviser. It appears Trump was right.
On Friday morning, President Donald Trump learned that his former national security adviser Michael Flynn had been charged with lying to the FBI by reportedly seeing news reports.
It was a shock but not necessarily a surprise.
For weeks, Trump has vented privately to advisers and confidants about his anxiety over signs that Flynn had flipped. He noted the possibility that Flynn had “turned on me,” three sources close to the president independently recall him saying. These sources had relayed details of these conversations to The Daily Beast over the course of the past week.
Trump’s fears came into sharp focus this past month, as several media outlets began to report that Flynn appeared to be cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
The president—an avid and voracious consumer of Twitter and cable news—began privately fuming, according to an administration official and two outside allies of Trump. Two of the three sources noted that it sounded at times as if Trump felt personally hurt by the prospect that someone whom he admired professionally and liked personally had potentially turned.
Sources said that President Trump’s flourish in his Thanksgiving speech to members of the U.S. Coast Guard—during which he said, “You never know about an ally. An ally can turn”—was intended as not-so-subtle jab at his former national security adviser.
I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 2, 2017
Pres. Trump tells reporters he's not worried what Michael Flynn may tell special counsel: "There has been absolutely no collusion." https://t.co/jnFCXhHMMj pic.twitter.com/N1ctYzm7FJ
— ABC News (@ABC) December 2, 2017