How Mike Flynn Says the Plan to Oust Trump Began
The hum of politics in Washington is never quiet. Power shifts, alliances form and collapse, and rumors often travel faster than truth. Yet sometimes, a claim emerges that freezes even the most jaded observers—a story that hints the real battle wasn’t between Republicans and Democrats, but inside the Trump administration itself.
Last week, retired three-star General Michael T. Flynn—a man who once stood at the center of President Donald Trump’s national-security circle—set off a new tremor. Speaking to conservative host Benny Johnson, Flynn accused former Vice President Mike Pence and former House Speaker Paul Ryan of quietly plotting to push Trump aside during his first term and even before he won the 2016 election.
The allegation was not shouted; it came in the even, confident tone of a veteran used to briefing presidents. “Oh yeah, there’s no doubt about it,” Flynn said. “Paul Ryan and Mike Pence wanted Trump out … They were ready to step right in.”
To many listeners, it sounded like a bombshell revisiting an old political earthquake: the Access Hollywood tape scandal, the near implosion of the Trump campaign, and the tension that surrounded Trump’s earliest days in office. But for Flynn, it was more than gossip—it was proof of what he calls a “Uniparty”, a Washington elite determined to preserve its own power even if that meant undercutting the voters who had just upended the system.
The General’s Return
For nearly a decade before his fiery exit from the White House, Flynn’s name carried a special weight in the U.S. military and intelligence community. A career intelligence officer, he had served in combat zones from Iraq to Afghanistan and later led the Defense Intelligence Agency under President Barack Obama. Those who knew him described a hard-driving strategist—part scholar, part soldier—who believed intelligence should be used to predict enemies’ moves, not merely report them.
His tenure at the DIA, however, was rocky. Flynn frequently clashed with Obama-era officials, accusing them of politicizing intelligence and downplaying the threat of radical extremism. When he was forced out in 2014, allies said he had been punished for speaking inconvenient truths. That experience left him deeply skeptical of Washington’s bureaucratic machinery—and it shaped his later loyalty to Trump, whom he saw as an outsider willing to take on the same entrenched establishment.
When Trump announced his candidacy in 2015, few believed the brash businessman would reach the Oval Office. Flynn, however, sensed something shifting. At rallies, he saw the same raw energy he had witnessed among troops in the field—an impatience with leadership that talked endlessly while ordinary people bore the cost. When Trump asked him to serve as national-security adviser, Flynn accepted without hesitation.
But his tenure lasted only twenty-four days. A wave of leaks about his conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak forced his resignation and marked the beginning of years of investigation and public vilification. To Flynn, those events weren’t isolated—they were the continuation of a covert campaign to “neutralize Trump’s movement before it could challenge the system.”
Inside the 2016 Firestorm
During the Johnson interview, Flynn revisited a moment that nearly derailed Trump’s candidacy: the release of the Access Hollywood tape in October 2016. The recording, leaked just weeks before Election Day, captured Trump making vulgar comments about women. The fallout was immediate and brutal. Prominent Republicans condemned him; newspapers predicted his campaign’s collapse.
According to Flynn, it was during those frantic days that certain Republican power brokers—chief among them Pence, Ryan, and then-Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus—saw a chance to remove Trump from the ticket altogether.
“They actually wanted … they were hopeful because that tape didn’t come out through Democrat operatives,” Flynn told Johnson. “There was a plan for, you know, hopefully Trump’s going to step down and go, ‘Screw this, you guys can have it.’ Those guys were ready to step right in.”
The claim paints a picture of a backroom contingency plan: if Trump resigned, Pence would assume the nomination, with Ryan—then one of the most powerful Republicans in Washington—positioned to provide congressional backing. The scheme never materialized, of course; Trump refused to quit, telling crowds that only the American people could decide his fate. Yet Flynn argues that the episode revealed something deeper than political opportunism—it showed how fragile loyalty can be inside the corridors of power.
The “Uniparty” Theory
To Flynn, Pence and Ryan’s alleged plotting wasn’t merely about personalities. It was a symptom of what he calls the Uniparty, a fusion of establishment Democrats and Republicans bound not by ideology but by a shared interest in maintaining control.
“This is where the ‘Uniparty’ steps in,” he said. “All these guys that people think are great because they’re Republicans? Sorry—they’re not. They don’t want to accept that we are in the midst of a revolution and a Marxist takeover.”
The general’s words echoed years of frustration among conservative grassroots activists who believe Washington’s elites—on both sides—work together to undermine populist reform. To them, the struggle is not just over tax rates or foreign policy but over who governs America: an elected outsider backed by voters, or a permanent class of insiders fluent in procedure and survival.
Flynn tied that conflict to a broader ideological project dating back to the Obama years. “Barack Obama should never have won the first time around,” he said. “But he did because there was a push … to start this turnover of our country. Eight years of Barack, eight years of Hillary—we’d be done.”
It’s a vision of history in which political shifts are less the product of coincidence than of design. In Flynn’s telling, the 2016 election disrupted a long-term plan to embed a globalist, socialist orientation into American governance—a plan that Trump’s victory only temporarily halted.
Why the Accusations Matter
Flynn’s accusations against Pence and Ryan cut to the heart of Republican identity. Both men once symbolized the party’s institutional stability. Pence, a former congressman and governor, presented himself as a calm evangelical conservative—the steady hand beside Trump’s tempest. Ryan, the budget hawk and policy wonk from Wisconsin, embodied the establishment’s intellectual wing. Together they were supposed to balance Trump’s unpredictability with reassurance to donors and traditionalists.
If Flynn’s version of events is accurate, however, their roles were far different: not stabilizers, but saboteurs waiting for the opportunity to restore business as usual.
Critics will note that Flynn has long been a polarizing figure. Supporters view him as a whistleblower persecuted by the same intelligence agencies he once served. Detractors dismiss his claims as conspiratorial grievances. Yet even skeptics acknowledge that his insights come from proximity few others possessed. He sat in briefings, heard private conversations, and witnessed the early fractures that would later explode into full-scale political warfare.
The broader question raised by his interview is not whether one believes every detail, but why so many Americans now find such scenarios plausible. After years of investigations, impeachments, and internecine feuds, trust in institutions—especially political parties—has eroded to near record lows. The idea that leaders might plot against their own president no longer feels impossible; it feels almost inevitable.
Trump’s Authority and the Limits of Power
Midway through the interview, Flynn shifted from recounting past betrayals to warning about the future. “Trump has got a lot of authority, right? A lot of leadership authority that he’s been given by the judgment of the American people,” he said. That authority, he insisted, comes not from bureaucrats but from voters—the ultimate source of constitutional legitimacy.
“He’s going to have to make a decision about how and who to hold accountable,” Flynn added. “And he’s going to have to turn.”
What did he mean by “turn”? To some, it sounded like a call for Trump to confront those within his own party who had undermined him. To others, it signaled a broader reckoning with the federal agencies and power structures that, in Flynn’s view, remain hostile to reform.
He reminded listeners that the President of the United States, not the Attorney General, is “the chief law-enforcement officer in the country.” The line may seem technical, but for Flynn it carries moral weight. It underscores the idea that the president, chosen directly by citizens, has both the authority and responsibility to defend the nation from internal subversion.
Flynn went further, noting that the president holds unique constitutional powers: the ability to grant pardons, to declare national emergencies, and to make decisions in the name of national security. “He can decide which direction the country goes,” Flynn said. “And he does it because the judgment of the American people were imbued into his ability to do that.”
To supporters, it was a reminder of democratic mandate. To critics, a troubling hint at executive overreach. Either way, Flynn’s framing placed Trump not merely as a political figure but as the singular guardian of an embattled republic—a man burdened with the duty to restore the balance he believes was lost.
Between Loyalty and Ambition
For historians of American politics, the story Flynn tells fits into a long lineage of internal power struggles: Jefferson and Burr, Lincoln and McClellan, Roosevelt and Taft. The presidency has always been a magnet for both loyalty and ambition. Yet what makes the Trump era distinct is how quickly those lines blurred.
Within months of taking office, Trump faced not only opposition from Democrats but also quiet resistance from inside his own administration. Anonymous op-eds boasted of officials “steering” the president’s impulses. Leaks flooded newspapers faster than policies could be drafted. Staffers came and went in record numbers.
In that environment, Flynn’s allegation that Pence and Ryan were prepared to “step in” gains resonance. Even if one doubts the literal plot he describes, the broader pattern is undeniable: the 45th president’s greatest obstacles often came not from across the aisle, but from within his supposed allies’ ranks.
The Access Hollywood crisis, in retrospect, was an early test. It revealed who would stand with Trump when the cost of association skyrocketed. Pence publicly condemned the remarks and canceled campaign appearances; Ryan disinvited Trump from a Wisconsin rally. Trump survived—but the fractures never fully healed. By the time the administration faced impeachment in 2019, many of those early skeptics had already drifted into open opposition.
Echoes of a Larger Battle
Flynn’s narrative also taps into a deeper philosophical conflict over what America should be. In his telling, Trump represents “America First” nationalism—a belief that sovereignty, borders, and traditional values must take precedence over global consensus. The opposing force, he says, is an “underlying far-left socialism push” that gained momentum under Obama and seeks to redefine the nation through bureaucracy, ideology, and cultural transformation.
The battlefield, then, is not just electoral but existential. “They don’t want to accept that we are in the midst of a revolution,” Flynn warned. To him, the revolution is already underway—a slow-motion struggle for the country’s identity, fought in courtrooms, agencies, and media narratives as much as at ballot boxes.
As the first part of his interview drew to a close, one could sense that Flynn’s purpose wasn’t simply to settle old scores. It was to issue a challenge: to make Americans question whether the institutions they trust still serve them, and whether political parties can be instruments of renewal or merely masks for continuity.
The Unfinished War — Flynn’s Warning, Trump’s Reckoning, and the Shadow of the “Uniparty”
By the time General Mike Flynn’s interview with Benny Johnson ended, the air in conservative circles was electric. It wasn’t just that Flynn had accused two of the most recognizable Republican figures—Mike Pence and Paul Ryan—of plotting against Trump. It was that his story fit neatly into the unease millions of Americans already felt: that the system itself had been rigged long before 2016, and that Trump’s presidency merely exposed what was hiding in plain sight.
Flynn didn’t just describe a betrayal; he outlined a map of power—one where party lines are an illusion and the real battle is between the governed and the governing.
From the Shadows of 2016 to the Echoes of 2025
Nearly a decade after the 2016 election, the questions Flynn raised still reverberate. Why did so many establishment figures recoil from Trump, even after he delivered tax cuts, conservative judges, and record deregulation? Why did the same Congress that campaigned on border security hesitate when Trump tried to enforce it?
To Flynn, the answer is simple—and damning. Because Trump, for all his flaws, represented something that Washington feared: unpredictability. He didn’t owe donors, think tanks, or lobbyists. His allegiance was to voters, not to the quiet deals that kept political careers comfortable. That independence, Flynn argues, made him intolerable to those who had built careers mastering the system.
And so, he says, they sought to manage him, then to contain him, and finally—if necessary—to remove him.
That narrative doesn’t depend on wild conspiracies; it’s supported by the visible record. In 2017, leaks from the intelligence community crippled the administration’s early momentum. Anonymous officials bragged to the press about “saving the republic” from Trump’s decisions. Congressional Republicans, led by Speaker Ryan, often appeared reluctant to defend the president against media onslaughts. By the time impeachment arrived, many within Trump’s own circle were already calculating their post-Trump futures.
Flynn’s account of Pence and Ryan only gives names to what many suspected: that the resistance to Trump was not a partisan project, but an institutional one.
The Vice President’s Dilemma
Mike Pence has long presented himself as the epitome of loyalty—a calm, devout conservative who stood by Trump through chaos. Yet his relationship with the president was always complex. Behind their public partnership, aides described two men with profoundly different temperaments: one impulsive and combative, the other cautious and deliberate.
The breaking point came on January 6, 2021, when Pence refused Trump’s call to block certification of the Electoral College results. To Flynn and other Trump allies, that moment wasn’t an act of constitutional fidelity—it was confirmation of what they had long feared: that Pence’s loyalty had always been conditional.
When Flynn now claims Pence was prepared to “step in” back in 2016, it recasts that fateful day not as a single disagreement, but as the culmination of years of quiet divergence. It suggests a through line connecting the Access Hollywood crisis, the leaks, and the Capitol turmoil—a steady resistance hidden behind a facade of obedience.
Pence has, of course, denied any plotting. His post-Vice-Presidential book paints himself as a man caught between chaos and duty. Yet among Trump’s base, Flynn’s retelling may prove more powerful than any denial, because it confirms what many already believe: that betrayal came not from the Left, but from the inner circle.
Paul Ryan and the Ghost of the Establishment
If Pence embodied restraint, Paul Ryan embodied calculation. Once hailed as the GOP’s “policy prodigy,” Ryan represented a generation of Republicans who believed the path to power lay in white papers and fiscal responsibility. His brand of politics thrived in think tanks, not rallies. When Trump arrived—a billionaire populist who spoke of forgotten workers instead of balanced budgets—Ryan’s world tilted.
Publicly, he played the part of reluctant ally. Privately, according to Flynn, he and Reince Priebus discussed what to do if Trump collapsed. To Flynn, that wasn’t crisis management—it was ambition in disguise.
By 2018, Ryan had retired from Congress, citing frustration with Washington’s dysfunction. But even from the sidelines, he continued to warn against Trumpism, calling it a “personality cult.” Flynn, in turn, sees that as evidence of the deeper divide: between those who view politics as management and those who see it as struggle.
Ryan’s quiet presence still looms over the GOP’s corporate and donor wings. He sits on boards, advises media companies, and supports candidates who promise a “return to normalcy.” To Flynn and his supporters, that normalcy is precisely the problem—the return of the old order under a different name.
The “Uniparty” in Full View
In the months since the interview, the phrase “Uniparty” has echoed across conservative forums like a rallying cry. The idea isn’t new; it traces back to populist writers who argued that Washington operates as a single organism, self-sustaining and insulated from voters. But Flynn gave the theory a voice—and a face.
He tied the concept not only to domestic politics but to global trends: international institutions, trade pacts, and bureaucracies that, in his words, “chip away at sovereignty in the name of progress.” What makes the Uniparty dangerous, he argued, isn’t that it hides behind one ideology—it hides behind both.
“They wear different colors,” Flynn said in another segment, “but they speak the same language: control.”
His remarks resonate because they match the lived experience of many Americans. Whether under Democrats or Republicans, they see the same patterns: ballooning debt, endless wars, corporate bailouts, and vanishing middle-class security. For them, Flynn’s claims are not shocking—they’re confirmation that someone in the upper echelons finally said it aloud.
Flynn’s Vision of Presidential Power
When Flynn reminded Johnson’s audience that the president is the “chief law enforcement officer of the country,” it wasn’t just a civics lesson—it was a philosophy of governance. To him, Trump’s mandate isn’t administrative; it’s existential. The people, he argues, imbued him with authority not to maintain the status quo, but to confront it head-on.
“He can declare things based on national security and national emergency issues alone,” Flynn said. “He can decide which direction the country goes.”
Those words sent shivers through critics who fear an imperial presidency. But to Trump loyalists, they were reassurance—a reminder that the constitutional system still grants the president vast powers when used in defense of the nation. Flynn’s point wasn’t that Trump should rule unchecked, but that he must not allow the permanent bureaucracy to rule him.
He has lived that dynamic personally. His own downfall in early 2017—the intercepted phone calls, the FBI interviews, the prosecution later voided by presidential pardon—stands as his cautionary tale. Flynn now speaks of “lawfare” and “weaponized justice” not in theory, but from experience. That history gives his warnings weight among those who believe the machinery of government has turned inward against dissent.
The Reckoning Ahead
The question Flynn leaves hanging is not merely about what happened in 2016, but what comes next. If Trump returns to power—as current polling sometimes suggests—how will he confront the network of insiders that once sought to restrain him? Will he seek reconciliation, or retribution?
Flynn offers no blueprint, only an insistence that “enough is enough.” His tone carries both weariness and conviction. He speaks like a soldier who has seen too many campaigns waged with half measures. “He’s going to have to make a decision about who to hold accountable,” Flynn said. “And he’s going to have to turn.”
In the silence that followed that line, listeners could almost hear what he didn’t say aloud: that second chances come rarely, and the stakes now are not just political but civilizational.
Among conservative audiences, that warning has taken root. Forums buzz with talk of “draining the swamp 2.0,” of restructuring federal agencies, of reviving the forgotten principle that government serves by consent, not command. To others, Flynn’s language sounds dangerous—an invitation to authoritarianism wrapped in patriotism. Yet both interpretations miss something subtler: his belief that systems, left unchecked, always drift toward self-preservation. Only outside pressure—popular, democratic, sometimes uncomfortable—can redirect them.
Reactions and Reverberations
Official responses from the accused have been muted. Pence’s representatives declined comment; Ryan’s allies dismissed the interview as “revisionist history.” Establishment outlets framed Flynn’s remarks as another flare of grievance politics. But outside Washington, the conversation has taken on a life of its own.
On podcasts and forums, veterans, small business owners, and activists dissect his every word. Some share transcripts as if studying coordinates on a battlefield map. They see in Flynn not a politician but a man who once paid the price for challenging power—and is now warning others before history repeats.
In that sense, his story transcends personalities. It becomes a parable about what happens when loyalty to the system outweighs loyalty to principle. When Pence and Ryan hesitated, Flynn suggests, they weren’t just calculating politics—they were defending an old order terrified of losing its grip.
Whether one agrees or not, the emotional power of that narrative is undeniable. It speaks to a nation exhausted by scandals, investigations, and unkept promises. Americans no longer ask, Who’s right? They ask, Who’s real?
The Broader Battle for America First
At the heart of Flynn’s message lies a deeper divide: “America First” versus the ideological descendants of globalization. To Flynn, the former means returning power to families, workers, and communities; the latter, surrendering it to technocrats and multinationals. The struggle, he insists, is not between parties but between visions of civilization itself.
He warns that the far-left movement—“the Marxist takeover,” as he calls it—operates not through dramatic revolutions but through institutions: schools, corporations, bureaucracies, even the military. The resistance to Trump, in that sense, is just one front in a much larger war for cultural and political sovereignty.
This framing transforms politics into something almost spiritual. Trump becomes not merely a candidate but a symbol—the imperfect vessel of a populist awakening. Pence and Ryan, in contrast, become symbols of the old covenant with power: respectable, polite, and ultimately submissive to the same forces Trump was elected to defy.
For Flynn’s audience, that dichotomy clarifies everything. It explains why the establishment recoiled from Trump’s unpredictability, why scandals multiplied around his allies, and why even victories felt sabotaged from within. The system, in this view, never forgave him for breaking the illusion of control.
Flynn’s Final Message
As the interview concluded, Flynn leaned forward, his voice steady but heavy with implication. “He can decide which direction the country goes,” he repeated. “And he does it because the majority of the judgment of the American people were imbued into his ability to be able to do that. That’s where we are.”
Those final four words—“That’s where we are”—carried the weight of both warning and invitation. They acknowledged a crossroads: between resignation and renewal, between letting the old order reassert itself or confronting it once more.
For Flynn, this isn’t just about Trump. It’s about a generation of Americans deciding whether to remain governed by systems that view them as statistics, or to reclaim the messy, unpredictable sovereignty that democracy once promised.
The general’s story—part memoir, part indictment—may never be proven in full. But its power lies not in verifiable documents or smoking guns; it lies in what it awakens. It asks Americans to consider that the greatest battles are rarely fought between parties, but within them. That betrayal, when it comes, often wears the face of friendship.
And as the political winds of 2025 gather again—Trump circling the arena, Pence fading into consultancy, Ryan advising from the boardrooms—the question remains exactly where Flynn left it: Who really governs America—and how long will the governed allow it?
Adrian Hawthorne is a celebrated author and dedicated archivist who finds inspiration in the hidden stories of the past. Educated at Oxford, he now works at the National Archives, where preserving history fuels his evocative writing. Balancing archival precision with creative storytelling, Adrian founded the Hawthorne Institute of Literary Arts to mentor emerging writers and honor the timeless art of narrative.