“He's absolutely right. There's a severe disconnect between this White House and frankly the president and our military,” Flynn says. | Getty Flynn says Trump 'absolutely right' in saying generals reduced to rubble

Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn said Donald Trump was “absolutely right” when he said Wednesday night that under President Barack Obama, “the generals have been reduced to rubble.”

“He's absolutely right. There's a severe disconnect between this White House and frankly the president and our military,” Flynn, a top Trump surrogate, said Thursday morning on Fox News’s “Fox and Friends.” “I mean, there's a lot of frustration within the ranks and there's a lot of frustration I know in the senior leadership about what we're not able to do.”


Trump’s comments, which came during an answer about how he would combat the Islamic State during NBC’s commander in chief forum, have drawn scrutiny from some who saw the comment as a dig at America’s military. Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager Robby Mook said as much in an interview earlier Thursday morning, arguing that Trump “lashed out at our nation's generals when he was asked for details.”

But Flynn said Trump has “enormous respect” for the military and his rubble comment was instead an expression of frustration with the strategy the U.S. has taken in its battle against the Islamic State.

“I mean, there's no enemy that's unbeatable. And what we have right now, is we have over four-and-a-half, five years of fighting ISIS now as though they're some unbeatable enemy. There's, again, an enormous frustration,” Flynn said. “Donald Trump has enormous respect for our military, for our military leaders and he also said last night for our intelligence professionals. I know I have been in a couple of these intelligence briefings that have been in stark contrast to the policy decisions we are seeing coming out of this White House. So this is a very dangerous time.”