As possibilities for the open minded, here are a couple of articles from established, well respected journals and journalists with a different take on the seeming chaos and/or buffoonery:
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/artic...-michael-flynn
Eli Lake is a columnist for the Bloomberg View. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI. In 2012, Lake disclosed how the UN documented U.S. violations of an arms embargo in Somalia. And his reporting has “earned praise from both conservatives and liberals.” In 2013, Lake disclosed how court documents in the U.S. government challenge to Blackwater showed that the mercenary organization was an extension of the CIA after 9-11. [From his Wikipedia bio]
Couple of excerpts from his article on Flynn:
"The New York Times and Washington Post reported that the transcript of the phone call reviewed over the weekend by the White House could be read different ways. One White House official with knowledge of the conversations told me that the Russian ambassador raised the sanctions to Flynn and that Flynn responded that the Trump team would be taking office in a few weeks and would review Russia policy and sanctions. That's neither illegal nor improper."
… "Normally intercepts of U.S. officials and citizens are some of the most tightly held government secrets. This is for good reason. Selectively disclosing details of private conversations monitored by the FBI or NSA gives the permanent state the power to destroy reputations from the cloak of anonymity. This is what police states do.
In the past it was considered scandalous for senior U.S. officials to even request the identities of U.S. officials incidentally monitored by the government (normally they are redacted from intelligence reports). ... The fact that the intercepts of Flynn's conversations with Kislyak appear to have been widely distributed inside the government is a red flag."
Then there’s this from Ivan Krastev and Steven Holmes:
The Kremlin Is Starting to Worry About Trump | Foreign Policy
Krastev is the chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, a founding board member of the European Council on Foreign Relations, and a member of the Advisory Council of the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). Holmes is a Professor of Law at NYU (w/ a long history in Political Science). From the article:
“The search for a key to Trump’s mind-boggling and miscellaneous gusher of policy directives has tended to focus on his disturbingly erratic, vindictive, simplistic, narcissistic, insecure, and occasionally delusional personality, due exception being made for those conspiracy theorists who treat him as a kind of Manchurian candidate or sock puppet of the Kremlin. What most observers have been late to recognize is the extent to which, behind his mask as a showman, Trump views himself as a revolutionary insurgent with a mission to dismantle America’s “old regime.”
… “What we are witnessing now,” [Steve] Bannon told the Washington Post, “is the birth of a new political order, and the more frantic a handful of media elites become, the more powerful that new political order becomes itself.”
… What the Kremlin fears most today is that Trump may be ousted or even killed. His ouster, Kremlin insiders argue, is bound to unleash a virulent and bipartisan anti-Russian campaign in Washington. Oddly, therefore, Putin has become a hostage to Trump’s survival and success. This has seriously restricted Russia’s geopolitical options. The Kremlin is perfectly aware that Democrats want to use Russia to discredit and possibly impeach Trump while Republican elites want to use Russia to deflate and discipline Trump. The Russian government fears not only Trump’s downfall, of course, but also the possibility that he could opportunistically switch to a tough anti-Moscow line in order to make peace with hawkish Republican leaders in Congress.
Anyone who spends any time in Moscow will quickly discover that ordinary Russians, in contrast with a majority of Europeans, feel surprisingly positive about Trump. One reason is that they are exhausted at Russia’s confrontation with the West. Another is that they share Trump’s cynical, borderline apocalyptic view of international politics. Like Trump, they never believed in win-win politics in the first place.