When he was a right-wing pundit, senior State Department adviser Frank Wuco 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 pushed conspiracy theories about the Obama administration and said that “societies and nations for millennia have suffered greatly” for LGBTQ acceptance.
The Washington Post reported on November 27 that Wuco is now a senior adviser at the State Department’s Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance. The publication added that during a 2016 radio appearance, Wuco had “suggested dropping nuclear bombs on Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks.”
Wuco, a retired naval intelligence officer, previously worked as a conservative pundit and radio host before joining the Department of Homeland Security in January 2017. As a DHS senior adviser, he helped implement Trump’s orders to the agency, including his ban on travelers from some Muslim-majority countries.
Last year, I was asked by the civil rights group CAIR-Minnesota to research the financing behind a rash of disparaging news coverage of Minnesota’s Muslims. I assumed I’d be cataloging the work of a few small-town bloggers, and that the hard part would be managing expectations.
