President Trump dismissed six officials of the National Security Council after an extraordinary meeting at the Oval Office with the far -right activist Laura Loomer, who established a list of people she believed to be unfair towards the president, US officials announced on Thursday.
The layoffs were described by one of the US officials, who had direct knowledge of the issue. The decision was made after Ms. Loomer disseminated staff members by name during the meeting on Wednesday when she entered the White House with a wreath of papers attacking the character and loyalty of many NSC officials. Michael Waltz, the national security advisor, joined the meeting later and briefly defended part of his staff, although it was clear that he had little or no power to protect their job.
It was a remarkable spectacle: Ms. Loomer, who launched the theory of baseless conspiracy according to which the attacks of September 11 were “inner work” and are considered extreme even by some of Mr. Trump’s far -right allies, apparently exercised more influence on the staff of the National Security Council than Mr. Waltz, who led the agency. A long -standing supporter of Mr. Trump who frequently talked about his desire to work with him, Ms. Loomer was one of Mr. Trump’s most vicious online executors during the 2024 campaign.
The story of the White House meeting with Ms. Loomer and the following layoffs is based on interviews with eight people knowing the events. They asked for anonymity to discuss confidential meetings and conversations.
Licensed persons included Brian Walsh, the main information director; Maggie Dougherty, principal director of international organizations; And Thomas Boodry, Senior Director of Legislative Affairs. None could be joined to comment.
Mr. Waltz was not dismissed, nor one of the main targets of Ms. Loomer, the deputy advisor of national security Alex Wong. In addition to the layoffs, several other officials who had been detailed on the board were reassigned to their original agencies this weekend, even before the White House meeting.
Ms. Loomer, involved by phone, refused to comment. After the New York Times reported on the details of the meeting, she confirmed on X that she had attended the meeting but would not provide details. A White House spokesman did not respond to an email asking for comments, and NSC officials said they would not comment on personnel issues.
Ms. Loomer was part of a group effort of certain Trump allies to denigrate members of the White House staff whom they consider too Bellician, too eager to commit American troops in the world and fundamentally in contradiction with Mr. America First’s foreign policy “of Mr. Trump.
The agitators used the expression “neocon” – abbreviation of neoconservative – to describe many of these members of staff working for Mr. Waltz.
The meeting of approximately 30 minutes with Ms. Loomer was also followed by Vice-President JD Vance and other senior officials, including the chief of staff, Susie Wiles; The chief of the staff office, Sergio Gor; And the commercial secretary Howard Lutnick, whose brother died during the September 11 attacks.
A spokesman for Mr. Lunick did not immediately respond to a message asking for comments.
Ms. Loomer was seated directly in front of the president’s office. Representative Scott Perry, a Pennsylvania Republican, was also the representative who was one of Mr. Trump’s greatest allies in his efforts to overthrow his electoral loss in 2020. Mr. Perry expressed a separate list of staff concerns that he wanted to discuss with the president, and his meeting planned with Trump collided with Ms. Loomer, said one of the people.
Mr. Perry did not respond to a text message asking for comments.
We do not know what layoffs mean for Mr. Waltz, who has a tenuous grip on his own work. Trump has so far refused to end Mr. Waltz after inadvertently inviting the editor -in -chief of the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, in a signal group cat in which senior officials, including the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, have shared sensitive details on the military strikes to come against the terrorists of Houthi.
But the senior officials who discussed Mr. Waltz in private with the president say that Mr. Trump’s reluctance to dismiss his national security advisor is more a question of wanting to avoid poor publicity than a sign of confidence in Mr. Waltz. Trump clearly told his staff that he did not want to give the media the satisfaction of seeing Mr. Waltz dismissed. He also does not want to start the limit of dismissal of senior officials who tormented his first mandate, they said.
For some of the government, layoffs felt arbitrary. Most, if not all, the officials who were targeted by Ms. Loomer were placed by a process of verification of the personnel managed by the Trump administration.
The fact that Ms. Loomer met the president at the Oval Office was reported for the first time by newsletter status, but the details of what was discussed had not been revealed.
It was not clear how she had been invited to such a sensitive meeting with the president.
She turned in favor and in disgrace with Mr. Trump. During the race in 2024, Ms. Loomer said that “the White House felt the curry” if Kamala Harris was elected, a blow in her Indian heritage. During the Republican primary campaign, in which she was Mr. Trump’s attack dog against Governor Ron Desantis of Florida, Ms. Loomer launched the baseless idea that Mr. Desantis’s wife, Casey, had lied to breast cancer.
Trump moved away from Ms. Loomer in the last section of the campaign after inviting her to his plane to go to a series of events commemorating on September 11, which caused an outcry due to his conspiracy opinions on attacks.
However, Ms. Loomer remained in contact with some of Mr. Trump’s aid and, for the most part, defended the president with the president with blitz the opponents perceived and the enemies with burning attacks shared with her 1.5 million followers on X. She complained in recent weeks that she had not received an invitation to sit in the “new media seat” to White House, A “new media seat”.
His visit to the White House this week seemed to report a return to the good graces of Ms. Loomer, who has launched in recent weeks a series of attacks on social networks against the officials of the Trump administration, including Mr. Wong, the deputy advisor of national security.
Trump spoke somewhat sympathetic to Mr. Wong in some of his private conversations with advisers.
But Ms. Loomer, in posts on X, questioned Mr. Wong’s loyalty to the administration because his wife, Candice, had worked at the Ministry of Justice during the administrations of Biden and Obama. Ms. Wong was also a career prosecutor and head of the Ministry of Justice during the first term of Mr. Trump and clerk of the Brett judge Mr. Kavanaugh.
Ms. Loomer referred to Ms. Wong, whose father is of Taiwanese origin and worked for a business to create British satellites based in Hong Kong, as a “Chinese woman” and alleged that the family was part of a plot. She hypothesized that Mr. Wong was responsible for adding Mr. Goldberg to the signal conversation “express as part of a foreign opponent to embarrass the Trump administration on behalf of China”.
Last week, Ms. Loomer distinguished an assistant American prosecutor in Los Angeles, Adam Schleifer, who presented himself without success for the Congress as a democrat in 2020. Less than two hours after calling a “hateful trump” who should be dismissed on social networks, Mr. Schleifer was dismissed.
Since then, she has publicly called the layoffs of Maria Proestou, deputy assistant secretary of the Navy; Ivan Kanapathy, director of the National Security Council for Asia; Amer Ghalib, the mayor of Hamtramck, Michigan, who is Mr. Trump’s candidate to be the American ambassador to Kuwait; And Katrina Fototvat, head of the Global Questions Office for Women of the State Department. In at least one case, Ms. Loomer marked Mr. Gor, the chief of the White House staff.
In addition, Ms. Loomer said that the LGBTQ link at the center for veterans in the Veterans Department should be dismissed, as well as an unidentified staff member working in the NSC intelligence office which, according to her, was transgender and “hates President Trump”.
“If you are aware of this person and you have their name, please send it to me and I will publish their identity,” wrote Ms. Loomer on X on Saturday. “The American people deserves to know who is this trans-Biden restraint which is anchored in our intel community.”
Last month, she launched her own research and verification enterprise, called moving strategies, which, according to her, would provide high -level location for rental. The term refers to what she and others call “to become imminent”, that is to say when she targets someone, either in ambushed or online interviews. She also tried to dig up dirt on officials outside the administration, either because they followed Mr. Trump’s way, or because she questions their loyalty.
In recent weeks, she has said that two federal judges who have made decisions that blocking Mr. Trump’s efforts to expel non-citizens have been compromised due to the activities of their adult children.
However, sometimes she worked against certain people that Trump considers allies, notably Elon Musk, whom she criticized last year for her support for visas for highly qualified immigrants.
Some of Mr. Trump’s far -right allies consider that Ms. Loomer is a useful tool for attacking common enemies. And the president mainly admired the tactics of Ms. Loomer. Speaking during an event in Mar-A-Lago, he once distinguished her in the crowd.
“You don’t want to be imminent,” Trump said. “If you are imminent, you have deep trouble. This is the end of your career in one direction. Thank you, Laura.”
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