Throughout Donald Trump’s presidency, a wide variety of fringe figures with dubious qualifications and strange ideas have landed important jobs in the federal bureaucracy. But Frank Wuco tends to stand out.
A couple of weeks ago, the Washington Post reported on Wuco’s role as a senior adviser at the State Department’s Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance.
A former conservative talk radio host and naval intelligence officer who suggested dropping nuclear bombs on Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks now works on arms control issues at the State Department, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the matter. […]
Wuco works at the State Department, though some arms control advocates have questioned his suitability for the area of arms control given his past remarks.
Wuco, a retired naval intelligence officer turned far-right pundit, first gained notoriety as a Trump administration official two years ago, while serving as a White House senior adviser at the Department of Homeland Security. CNN reported at the time that he had an unfortunate habit of peddling bizarre conspiracy theories, including “claims that former President Barack Obama’s memoir was ghostwritten by former anti-Vietnam War radical Bill Ayers, that former CIA director John Brennan had converted to Islam and that Attorney General Eric Holder had been a member of the Black Panthers.”
In case this isn’t obvious, none of these theories is even remotely true.
Media Matters added that Wuco also claimed that Muslims “by-and-large” will “subjugate and humiliate non-Muslim members of their societies” and that their core faith purportedly instructs them that they can’t “coexist peacefully with other religions.” He also argued that “societies and nations for millennia have suffered greatly” for LGBTQ acceptance. CNN added last week that Wuco also said he thought Barack Obama was a Kenyan, called House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a “Nazi,” and argued that it’d be difficult for a “solid, practicing” Muslim to be a good American. This is the record Wuco brought with him to the Trump administration, in time advancing from the Department of Homeland Security to serving as a senior adviser at the State Department’s Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance. As best as I can tell, despite these recent media reports, Wuco has not stepped down from the Trump administration. Traditionally, in a normal administration, these kinds of revelations would prompt an inevitable resignation, but in 2019, it’s plausible that Wuco will maintain his State Department job.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past." Recommended
