Retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who formerly served as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said Tuesday that President Barack Obama is “very uncomfortable in the role of commander-in-chief.”
In an interview with The Washington Examiner, the three-star general continued his tradition of slamming the Obama administration by saying the president simply does a poor job of performing as commander-in-chief, as he’s “disconnected from” the military.
“This president is very, very uncomfortable with his military,” Flynn added.
Flynn argued the next president must reverse that trend.
“We need a president that can be very comfortable in the role of commander-in-chief,” he said.
For Flynn, Obama’s recent decision to bolster the number of troops in Iraq is tantamount to an admission of total failure. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter made the announcement Monday that the United States is sending over 560 more troops to the region, a move which Obama approved.
“I will just say that — and this is not to demean our troops, I mean they’re working their tails off — the president begrudgingly leaving more troops in Afghanistan than he wants to, and frankly this trickle effect into Iraq, is terrible,” Flynn said.
Obama appointed Flynn as head of the DIA in 2012. Flynn left in 2014 and said in a recent op-ed in the New York Post that the military essentially kicked him out for calling out radical Islam as a chief threat to the United States. Since he wasn’t being drummed out for poor leadership, Flynn figured it was due to his constant references to radical Islam.
In a Tuesday interview with The Daily Caller News Foundation, Flynn remarked that in five years of serving in important intelligence positions in the federal government, not once did Obama meet with him.
“Here I am, running one of the largest intelligence agencies in the world,” Flynn said. “He appoints me twice — one as the assistant director of national intelligence and one as the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. I’m also his senior intelligence officer. And I had almost five years in combat.”
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