Michael Flynn, former President Donald Trump's first national security adviser and a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general, spent part of his Sunday seemingly advocating for a Myanmar-style coup in the United States, CNN reports.
Over the weekend, Flynn appeared at an event in Dallas called the "For God & His Country Patriot Roundup," speaking to fans of the QAnon conspiracy theory and others who believe false claims that the 2020 election was rigged. Flynn is popular with the QAnon crowd, having repeated its talking points and shared a video of its slogans, CNN reports. Online, adherents of the conspiracy have been praising the deadly military coup in Myanmar, arguing that if the same thing happened in the U.S., Trump could be put back in the White House.
During a panel on Sunday, a member of the audience asked Flynn, "I want to know why what happened in Minamar [sic] can't happen here?" Flynn responded: "No reason. I mean, it should happen here. No reason. That's right."
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On Monday, lawyer Sidney Powell — one of the leading proponents of the groundless claim that Trump won the election and the subject of a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems — told CNN that Flynn did not encourage "any act of violence or any military insurrection." She also said, without providing any clarification or expanding on Flynn's remarks, that the media took his recorded words and "grossly distorted" them. Powell was also at the Dallas event, CNN reports, where she declared, falsely, that Trump should be "simply reinstated" and a "new inauguration day is set."
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