Salon referred to Trump’s former national security spokesman Michael Anton as the “Dystopian Prophet” and the “leading intellectual of the Trump revolution” for his ridiculous, over-the-top essay comparing the Trump movement to the heroes of Flight 93:
2016 is the Flight 93 election: charge the cockpit or you die. You may die anyway. You—or the leader of your party—may make it into the cockpit and not know how to fly or land the plane. There are no guarantees.
Except one: if you don’t try, death is certain. To compound the metaphor: a Hillary Clinton presidency is Russian Roulette with a semi-auto.
His essay was circulated widely in conservative circles, and is credited for pushing many skeptics into Trump’s camp. Anton has been a lapdog for Trump ever since.
Until now.
CNN's Erin Burnett had him scheduled to appear on her show to provide Trump’s defense of his performance in Helsinki, Finland. In case you missed it, in just one day: an American journalist was forcibly removed; Trump blamed the US for our problems with Russia; Trump threw every US intelligence agency under the bus; Trump explicitly refused to denounce the Russian attack on our elections; and groveled to Putin so much that even Fox News had enough.
To give you another idea of how bad it was for us, the Russians LOVED the #TreasonSummit:
This summit followed a week of Trump insulting Germany, threatening to dismantle NATO, insulting the British prime minister, and fist-bumping the Turkish dictator Erdogan after telling him he “does things the right way”.
Yet Michael Anton could always be counted on to give a full-throated defense of the Donald, or so we thought. Today, he just couldn’t do it. Really, what was he supposed to say?
Erin Burnett explained on her show:
"He was scheduled to be on the show, and he's not on because he said he's not going to defend what [Trump] did today," Burnett said.
CNN analyst John Avlon told Burnett, "You can't defend the indefensible. And today was indefensible."
Anton wasn’t the only Trump supporter who couldn’t stomach this:
Man, I really miss this guy…
Tuesday, Jul 17, 2018 · 6:40:13 PM +00:00 · SemDem
Michael Anton, realizing how bad this looks for him, is backtracking and failing miserably:
I did cancel, because I knew that whatever I said, CNN would try to use me as a cudgel with which to bash the President.
Sooooo... you admit you didn’t appear because you couldn’t defend Trump? OK. Isn’t that exactly what your rep told CNN? How does this make you look better?
Also, he is claiming that CNN “threatened” him by giving their viewers the reason he wouldn’t appear. I might be missing something here, but it’s not a threat to tell the truth. All of this makes Anton look worse, not better. Nonetheless, RedState is desperately trying to spin this with a story that Burnett “lied".
I guess telling the truth can be considered a threat to Trump supporters.