One of Donald Trump’s top supporters called for a reckoning among the political media and pollsters following the Republican’s upset win in the presidential election.
Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, speaking on Fox and Friends Wednesday morning, said the media and pollsters missed the fact that Trump’s message was resonating with individual voters. He said the old way of doing things in political media is gone with Trump’s victory coming.
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“There’s going to be a lot of soul-searching by the media … and the polling people,” Flynn said. “I always say I don’t believe in these polls and, frankly, that whole system is blown up.”
Flynn said Trump’s message to voters — promising to pull the country back from the world and focus instead on internal issues while making an anti-immigrant message his centerpiece — resonated with people far more than establishment observers realized.
He said the important thing now for Trump is to keep pushing and developing that message into real proposals.
“The campaign trail … that sort of stage is over,” he said. “The really hard work is going to begin now.”
He added that Trump’s foreign policy might not be fully-formed at this point, but it will bring a beefed-up military.
“It’s going to be one that leads from the front,” Flynn said. “And, not to put anybody on notice, but to let people know Donald Trump is a very serious guy when it comes to defense and when it comes to our military.”
He added, “We have a depleted military that’s the weakest and smallest that it’s been in a while, and that’s not because of the men and women in uniform. That’s because of this administration.”
