 A lot of people are still shocked because Michael Flynn is a former Trump administration official who very publicly endorsed the idea of a Myanmar-style coup d'etat happening here in the United States. However, if you follow the Trump movement for months, this isn't necessarily that surprising and it didn't originate with Michael Flynn, this idea of a Myanmar-style military coup that is. And this is what one CNN reporter who's been following Trump supporters around for months explains in an interview on CNN and he also has some footage to back up his claims. Take a look. A former U.S. Army Lieutenant General and former National Security Advisor appearing to endorse a military coup here in the United States. Michael Flynn spent Memorial Weekend at a conference in Dallas attended by QAnon supporters. So too did Sidney Powell, who is part of the former president's election legal team. Powell, who has represented Flynn, said Monday that the media had grossly distorted Flynn's comments. She denied Flynn had encouraged violence or a military insurrection, but she didn't explain what Flynn had meant. Powell herself spoke of removing Biden from office over the weekend. We're definitely in uncharted territory. There are cases where elections have been overturned, but there's never been one at the presidential level, which everybody will jump to point out. That doesn't mean that it can't be done. It should be that he can simply be reinstated, that a new inauguration date is set. And Biden is told to move out of the White House and President Trump should be moved back in. The heavily criticized Republican-led audit in Arizona has given followers of QAnon and the big lie hope that the election could still be overturned. And some are finding inspiration in the deadly military coup in Myanmar as a way to put Trump back in power. Flynn's comments were seen as an endorsement of a coup by some QAnon followers. They were welcomed overnight by a prominent peddler of QAnon who has more than 70,000 followers on Telegram, writing, General Flynn says the quiet part out loud. Earlier this year, Trump supporters in California also cheered on the coup. Biden is just, he's like a puppet president. The military is in charge. It's going to be like Myanmar. What's happening in Myanmar, the military is doing their own investigation. And at the right time, they're going to be restoring the republic with Trump as president. Let's go in a different country. The government took over and they're redoing the election, correct? That could possibly happen here, possibly. Would you like to see it happen? Absolutely. I would like to see it happen. Really? Yes. You know why? Because the election was stolen from us. And Flynn yesterday coming out and saying that his words had been twisted, that he was not in fact calling for a coup and that he would never do such a thing. But look, these claims, this talk of a coup is something that has been floating around the QAnon and conspiracy theory world that Flynn and Sidney Powell have lived in for quite some time. Well, of course, you weren't endorsing a Myanmar style military coup here in the United States. Michael, right? Wink, wink. I mean, these folks, they will say something out in the open and then shamelessly deny it. It's not just Michael Flynn. Like we're seeing Marjorie Taylor Greene now deny that she compared the Congressional Mask mandate to the Holocaust. And she said it on camera just last week. So these people are absolutely shameless. And you think that they'd have some mechanism in their minds that makes them feel embarrassed when they shamelessly lie. But that's not the case. Now, in that clip, we also saw Sidney Powell, whose lawyers argued that no reasonable person would take what she said about the election series. She says that, you know, Trump could be reinstated. Now, believe it or not, that idea also did not originate with her. This has been floated by other Trump sick of fans. And yes, the main shed himself. Maggie Haberman of the New York Times explains that Trump has been telling close allies that he will in fact be reinstated and he's going to be reinstated very soon as president. In August is what he's been saying. Now, look, I don't know what extent Michael Flynn, Sidney Powell and Donald Trump believe the things that they're saying that are delusional. I think that Donald Trump probably believes it the most. But whether or not they believe it personally and they're just trying to profit off of this as some sort of a grift, I'm not sure. But what is really important is the fact that Trump supporters believe what they're saying. They can choose to not believe the delusional things that they're saying. And they're just throwing red meat to Trump loyalists. But if they believe it, that's what matters, because as January 6th powders, these folks aren't playing around. They're not just saying stop the steal because it makes them feel good. They genuinely believe that the election was stolen. And when high ranking former White House officials say things like this, endorse the idea of a Myanmar style military coup in the United States. This gives them more ammunition. And it frustrates me to see so many people downplay the significance of QAnon, because believe it or not, not only is this ruining lives of people whose family members have been lost to QAnon, but this group, a large portion of it is indeed dangerous. Not all of it are these benign idiotic ideas that they believe. Like some of these people are actually dangerous. This is a potentially violent group. And as David Gilbert of Vice News reports, QAnon has a disturbing takeover plot to, quote, eliminate public officials. He adds a known grifter and QAnon supporter who claims she can time travel has amassed an army of thousands of loyal followers to carry out a plot to oust elected officials across the country and replace them with QAnon believers, and she's using a game streaming platform to which to do it. Turp Shakur Maras Lindman has spent the last four months building an intricate network of groups in all 50 states, urging followers to dig up information about elected officials and cough up hundreds of dollars to take part in her scheme. Maras Lindman has promised her followers that the plot will bring about retaliation for what she believes was a stolen election last November and ultimately see the return of former President Donald Trump to the White House. All the while, Maras Lindman, who streams under the name Tori says, has grown her subscriber base massively, raking in tens of thousands of dollars since the beginning of the year. She even managed to convince her supporters to cough up over eighty seven thousand four hundred dollars in a crowdfunded campaign, which she used to buy a new Tesla. Maras Lindman is part of a growing ecosystem of grifters and hucksters who are leveraging the widespread belief that Trump's election loss was somehow orchestrated by shadowy figures and companies tied to the Democrats. This so-called big lie has taken hold within the mainstream Republican Party and fringe figures like Maras Lindman have succeeded in carving out a niche that's proving to be highly lucrative. Now, again, I don't know if this individual in particular referenced in this article is dumb or disingenuous. I don't know if she is genuinely delusional enough to believe that she can time travel or if she's just simply grifting and she's trying to make, you know, a few easy bucks off of fooling rubes. I don't know, but it's a distinction without a difference, whether or not she actually believes what she's doing. Enough people follow her that do believe what she's doing. And most people, I'm sure, will watch her content and think, wow, she's a truth teller. I love this. They'll just get more further, you know, deranged and more detached from reality. But some folks will actually choose to do violence. It's not like there isn't a precedent for this. Again, we saw what happened on January 6th. And what we're seeing is a sort of feedback loop. The more that public officials and Trump adjacent politicians who kind of want to replace Trump in 2024, if he doesn't run, the more that they lie about the election, the more that they do Trump's bidding for him and spread lies and misinformation. The more that they are loved by the base, if you go against what Trump wants, like Liz Cheney, the base will revolt against you. And, you know, for the foreseeable future, you don't have a future in the party. Anyone who wants to challenge Donald Trump, they're most likely not going to be successful. So what we're seeing here is there's this incentive now among a lot of Trump officials and Trump allies and Trump fans in general to continue to propagate this lie. And quite frankly, it is deeply, deeply dangerous.