Moscow on the Potomac: Two days after the election, President Obama warned Donald Trump not to make Gen. Michael Flynn his national security adviser, the White House admitted after NBC News broke the story.  Trump appointed Flynn anyway and had to fire him two weeks later for lying about contacts with the Russians.

Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates testified before a Senate Committee yesterday that she told the White House that Flynn had lied to Vice President Pence and was in a position to be blackmailed by the Russians who knew Flynn had lied. She said Pence needed to know that he was repeating Flynn’s falsehood.

“To state the obvious: You don’t want your national security adviser compromised with the Russians,” Yates told the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee.

Later in the day, President Trump issued a flurry of tweets whining about “fake news,” “old news,” and the lack of proof that his presidential campaign had any connection to the Russians. He wrote, “Sally Yates made the fake media extremely unhappy today — she said nothing but old news!” That was followed by “The Russia-Trump collusion story is a total hoax, when will this taxpayer funded charade end?”

Trump and his front people have been blaming the Obama administration for giving Flynn the highest security clearance. They did, but Obama also fired Flynn from the Defense Intelligence Agency for being a whack-nut.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer said, “The question that you have to ask yourself really is if President Obama was truly concerned about General Flynn, why didn’t he suspend General Flynn’s security clearance which they had just re-approved months earlier?” But The Trump team had their own opportunity to vet Flynn thoroughly, and didn’t.

Signal Boost: The conservative Sinclair Broadcast Group has agreed to pay $3.9 billion for Tribune Media, growing the company that’s already the biggest owner of local television stations. Sinclair has 173 stations.

Tribune, which has 42 stations, owns major independent stations in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, giving Sinclair a major-market footprint.

Sinclair tends to inject conservative political opinion into its news. Some analysts believe they’re preparing to go head-to-head with Fox News.

In March, Sinclair ordered all of its stations to run an editorial condemning mainstream news outlets for repeating “fake news,” an opinion echoing the false accusations of President Trump.

Permawar: US military leaders and the State Department are asking the Trump administration to send another 3,000 troops to Afghanistan to help fight the Taliban. The US already has 5,000 troops in the country.

World Politics: South Korean voters have overwhelmingly chosen liberal Moon Jae-in to replace the former president removed in a corruption scandal, according to exit polls. Moon would prefer to engage with North Korea rather than confront it. He has said he wants to remove the anti-missile system recently installed by the US. — France’s President-elect Emmanuel Macron is forming a new government, having campaigned for a new style of politics. London Bureau Chief Griff Witte writes in The Washington Post that, “In the country that invented the modern notions of political right and left, Emmanuel Macron won the French presidency from perhaps the most precarious place possible: the center. Now he has to figure out how to govern from there.”

 The Obit Page: Stanley Weston, who invented GI Joe, the Barbie doll for boys, has died in Los Angeles at age 84.

As American troops poured into Vietnam, Weston thought of a rock-jawed soldier with lots of weaponry for boys. He sold his idea to a Rhode Island Company that became Hasbro, a giant in toys. Weston was paid $100,000 for what became a $100 million business. He went on to become a major figure in the toy licensing business.

The Book Section: Former President Bill Clinton is writing a novel with bestselling potboiler author, James Patterson. The book is to be titled, “The President is Missing.” If only.

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