UPDATE: Trump's new national security mentor - Laura Loomer?
She's a white nationalist who thinks school shootings are fake and Haitians snack on pets, so she fits right in
By Sam Bellamy
It doesn’t get any Trumpier than this: In response to the controversy over his national security team using the unsecured messaging app Signal to chat about war plans, our stable genius has fired the head of the National Security Agency, whose cyber security experts had warned government employees last month to stop using Signal for sensitive conversations.
Don’t dwell too long on that trying to figure out the tiny thread of logic Trump’s tiny hands and brain tried to pull there. Because it gets worse.
Multiple administration officials have leaked to news outlets that the decision to fire Gen. Timothy Haugh — the highly regarded leader of NSA and U.S. Cyber Command — was the direct result of Trump meeting this week in the Oval Office with Laura Loomer, who’s more or less Alex Jones of Infowars in a dress. Except she may actually believe the batshittery she peddles for profit.
Trump is quite noticeably smitten with Loomer, who accompanied him to a 9/11 commemoration last year despite the fact that she once called the al-Qaida attack “an Inside Job!” She describes herself as a "#ProudIslamophobe,” has declared herself “pro-white nationalism,” has spoken at conferences with avowed white supremacists, and — fortunately — has twice lost bids to get elected to Congress from Florida.
Several media outlets have quoted anonymous Trump aides as saying Loomer fed the orange menace a couple of outlandish conspiracy theories when they were together at the 9/11 — including that Haitian immigrants were eating the pets of their neighbors.
Loomer also allegedly passed along to Trump that Kamala Harris has tried to hide her black heritage. She publicly declared that Harris, whose mother was Indian, would be a disaster as president because “the White House will smell like curry & White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center.” That was too much even for fellow wingnut Marjorie Taylor Greene, who denounced the comments as “appalling and extremely racist.”
If that’s not enough to convince you that she’s not something who should be involved in any government decisions, there’s this: Like the despicable Alex Jones, Loomer has claimed that numerous school shootings were staged and that the aggrieved are actors.
Trump, whose denials are almost always confirmations, said after he fired Haugh and five other members of the National Security Council — including deputy NSA head Wendy Noble — that he appreciated Loomer’s advice but that his decision wasn’t her doing.
Loomer seems to think otherwise. "NSA Director Tim Haugh and his deputy Wendy Noble have been disloyal to President Trump,” she posted it on X. “That is why they have been fired ... Thank you President Trump for being receptive to the vetting materials provided to you and thank you for firing these Biden holdovers."
What were those materials? No matter. None of anyone’s business.
On a positive note, the Pentagon Office of the Inspector General has opened an investigation into the Signal chat — a fact that several learning-to-walk-upright-again Republicans have even cheered.
Will it be a genuine investigation? Difficult to say at this stage, but I was surprised to hear that the Pentagon still had an inspector general following Trump’s recent purges of anyone who ever looks into anything he or his administration does.
Perhaps he’ll fire that inspector general too. After he consults with Laura Loomer, of course.
The following column, headlined “When your national security team isn’t secure/They’d be court-martialed if they were in uniform, but Trump stands by them,” appeared March 27.
By Sam Bellamy
Are Mike Waltz, Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, JD Vance and the other chat masters in Trump’s inner circle familiar with the National Security Agency? It seems like a pertinent question, given their responsibility for national security matters.
Last month, the NSA issued what it calls a special operational security bulletin stating the following: “A vulnerability has been identified in the Signal Messenger Application. The use of Signal by common targets of surveillance and espionage activity has made the application a high value target to intercept sensitive information.”
The bulletin, found here, was obtained by CBS News and shared with the nation this week after The Atlantic’s Jeff Goldberg – “a sleazebag,” according to Trump, a noted sleaze connoisseur – reaffirmed for the world that the president is surrounded by people as reckless as he is.
As you’ve undoubtedly read or heard by now, Goldberg was accidentally invited to a Signal chat by Waltz in which 18 Cabinet members and other high-ranking officials discussed a bombing attack on Houthi terrorists in Yemen and Hegseth shared detailed plans that put the lives of U.S. military personnel at risk.
Hegseth and others in the administration would disagree vociferously with the last phrase, but you’d have to possess Cabinet-level arrogance, duplicity and witlessness to argue that sharing the precise times, types of weapons and delivery systems for military operations on an unsecured messaging app does not endanger the lives of U.S. Navy pilots.
Had the information fallen into the hands of Russia, China, North Korea, Iran or other adversaries – a distinct possibility – the Houthis could have been alerted to what was supposed to be a surprised attack and taken steps to prepare and even intercept Navy fighter jets, according to defense experts.
“It is safe to say that anybody in uniform would be court martialed for this,” a defense official told CNN on the condition of anonymity. “We don’t provide that level of information on unclassified systems, in order to protect the lives and safety of the servicemembers carrying out these strikes. If we did, it would be wholly irresponsible. My most junior analysts know not to do this.”
If they haven’t already, administration officials will deny they ever got the NSA memo.
“Russian professional hacking groups are employing the ‘linked devices’ features to spy on encrypted conversations,” the bulletin from the agency said.
The NSA bulletin also offered specific steps to be taken by Pentagon employees and others, including “Don’t send anything compromising over any social media or internet-based tool/application” and – shazam – “Don’t establish connections with people you do not know.”
For the record, Waltz – our national security advisor, for the moment, at least – has said he doesn’t know Goldberg, a claim that naturally prompted people to dredge up photos of Waltz and Goldberg in the same room at the same time. Presumably, he never caught Goldberg’s name or profession, just his phone number.
As bad as all that is, it gets worse. Much worse. CBS News and others report that Trump's Ukraine and Middle East envoy, real estate developer Steve Witkoff, was in Moscow for a meeting with Vladimir Putin during the Signal conversation.
Witkoff was also a participant in the chat group about the Houthi bombing.
U.S. officials traveling to Russia are well aware that their cell phones, computers and every other access point to personal and government information are highly vulnerable to snooping while there. They routinely get this perfunctory warning, though it’s about as obvious as “don’t stand next to an open window.”
Witkoff said he didn’t have his personal devices with him, only a government phone, but he was clearly on the chat, although it appears he didn’t post a message until after he left Russia.
Nevertheless, we can be sure he was targeted by Russians. And that he had no business being in the chat group while he was in Moscow.
A couple of days after news of the scandal broke, the German newspaper Der Spiegel reported that its staff members “were able to find mobile phone numbers, email addresses and even some passwords belonging to the top officials.”
According to the news outlet, the officials include Waltz, Hegseth and Gabbard.
“Hostile intelligence services could use this publicly available data to hack the communications of those affected by installing spyware on their devices,” Der Spiegel reported. “It is thus conceivable that foreign agents were privy to the Signal chat group in which Gabbard, Waltz and Hegseth discussed a military strike.”
Continuing, the reporters wrote: “It remains unclear, however, whether this extremely problematic chat was conducted using Signal accounts linked to the private telephone numbers of the officials involved. Tulsi Gabbard has declined to comment. DER SPIEGEL reporting has demonstrated, though, that privately used and publicly accessible telephone numbers belonging to her and Waltz are, in fact, linked to Signal accounts.”
Trump, of course, says the media, Democrats and even some Republicans upset about this are on another “witch hunt.” Trump wasn’t part of the chat; the records show that he was golfing, among other things, during much of the discussion.
From the start, Hegseth and Gabbard in particular were demonstrably unqualified to serve in the vital positions they hold, and they both have character flaws that – lack of qualifications aside – should have ended their nominations quickly.
Waltz, a former congressman and Green Beret, certainly is demonstrating he’s not up to the job either. Politico reported that an administration staffer offered this observation about the guy who invited Goldberg to the party: “Everyone in the White House can agree on one thing: Mike Waltz is a fucking idiot.”
That’s too narrow an assessment, really. It’s a fair summation of everyone who participated in that chat group.
Trump shouldn’t need a special bulletin to tell him none of them should remain involved in our national security. But Congress, the media and the American people need to send that bulletin, over and over, to him before this incompetent crew causes the deaths of military personnel or civilians.