
Donald Trump and his White House have tried to blame President Barack Obama for Trump's incredibly poor decision to hire Michael Flynn. It's an absurd deflection, given that Obama fired Flynn. But a new report shows it's even more ridiculous than that.

Donald Trump continues to defend his hiring of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, despite the mounting pile of evidence that he and his team knew Flynn posed a threat to America's national security.

Among the Trump administration's many defenses of the decision to hire Flynn, despite the knowledge that he was a foreign agent and had accepted payments from foreign entities, the White House and the president himself have tried to place blame for this decision on President Barack Obama.

General Flynn was given the highest security clearance by the Obama Administration - but the Fake News seldom likes talking about that. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 8, 2017


There are two major problems with that. First, Flynn did work under the Obama administration and was granted national security clearance. But Obama also fired Flynn — a fact the Trump administration conveniently omits.

But now there is a second and even bigger problem with this defense. According to NBC News, Trump was specifically warned not to hire Flynn — by none other than President Obama himself:

The warning, which has not been previously reported, came less than 48 hours after the November election when the two sat down for a 90-minute conversation in the Oval Office. ... According to all three former officials, Obama warned Trump against hiring Flynn. The Obama administration fired Flynn in 2014 from his position as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, largely because of mismanagement and temperament issues.

Trump has criticized and attacked Obama for years, dismissing all of his accomplishments and claiming repeatedly on the campaign trail that Obama and his entire administration were idiots who didn't know what they were doing. So it was never a believable excuse that on this one issue — the matter of granting Flynn access to highly classified information — Trump would defer to Obama's judgment.

But the fact that Trump hired Flynn despite Obama's explicit warning not to proves what an incredible lie the whole thing is. Trump wanted Flynn on his team, no matter what the facts were, no matter what the truth was, no matter what the sitting president told him about the danger Flynn posed to national security.

Trump did what he wanted to do, and he has no one to blame but himself.