Cnn
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The White House has dismissed several administration officials, including at least four members of the national security council staff, three familiar sources told CNN.
The shots occurred after Laura Loomer, The far -right activist who claimed on September 11 was an inner job, President Donald Trump urged a meeting on Wednesday to get rid of several members of his national security council staff, including his main assistant national security adviser, saying they are unfair.
Who is Laura Loomer, the right -wing activist in the inner circle of Trump?
One of the sources said Loomer had compiled a list of about a dozen names, and that the following layoffs were the direct result of the meeting with Loomer, who was an influential voice around Trump during his campaign in 2024 last fall.
Trump defended people from people when they were talking to journalists on the Air Force One on Thursday. “Always, we’re going to abandon people – people we don’t like, or people we don’t think about you can do the job, or people who can have loyalty to someone else,” said Trump. But he said that Loomer was not involved in Wednesday’s layoffs, appealing him “a very good patriot”.
The Trump administration also dismissed the Director and Deputy Director of the National Security Agency, CNN reported Late Thursday.
The deputy vice-adviser of national security, Alex Wong, was not one of those who had been dismissed on Wednesday. However, a White House official speculated on Thursday in CNN that Wong could be absent later in the day, although a final decision was not made.
Wong was one of the advisers specifically targeted by Loomer, who publicly challenged his loyalty to Trump and criticized him in private as a “never at the time”.
One of the sources assumed that National Security Advisor Michael Waltz Perhaps relieved to dismiss Wong because it was involved in the controversy surrounding the leak of controversial signal messages linked to the military strikes on Yemen that Waltz and his team were criticized for having initiated.
The four licensed officials are Brian Walsh, director of intelligence and a former senior employee of the Secretary of the State Marco Rubio of the Senate Intelligence Committee; Thomas Boodry, Senior Director of Legislative Affairs who has previously been legislative director of Waltz at the Congress; David Feith, a senior director supervising technology and national security that served in the State Department during the first Trump administration; And Maggie Dougherty, principal director of international organizations.
“The NSC does not comment on staff ‘questions,” said NSC spokesperson Brian Hughes, in a statement at CNN.
All the officials who have been dismissed have undergone the same verification process in recent months – which included questions about loyalty to Trump’s agenda – who was headed by the director of the Personnel Office, Sergio Gor.
Trump praised Loomer on Thursday, saying that even if she recommended that she was dismissing people in the past, “yesterday she recommended some people for jobs.”
“She is a very strong person, and I saw her yesterday for a little while and she has it, she makes recommendations on things and people,” said Trump on the Air Force One. “And sometimes I listen to these recommendations, as I do with everyone, I listen to everyone, then I make a decision.”
Loomer did not offer details on the meeting, but said that she “would continue to repeat the importance of a strong verification”.
“Out of respect for President Trump and the private life of the Oval Office, I will refuse to disclose details on my meeting of the Oval Office with President Trump,” Loomer told CNN earlier on Thursday. “It was an honor to meet President Trump and present my conclusions to him, I will continue to work hard to support his program, and I will continue to repeat the importance of a strong verification, to protect the president and our national security.”
The meeting of the Oval Office with Loomer, who was reported for the first time by the New York Times, took place while the president and his economic team were preparing the pricing announcement in Rose Garden.
Waltz had been in the oval office for other meetings when Loomer arrived for an audience with Trump and had remained as president met a loomer.
It came then that Waltz faced increased criticism from the Trump administration officials and people close to the President for having created the signal chain where sensitive information concerning an imminent American attack on the Houthi rebels in Yemen were shared. While Trump publicly said that he was next to Waltz and the senior White House officials insist that he does not intend to dismiss him, several familiar sources with behind the scenes say to CNN that Trump is waiting to see how everything is going.
Waltz traveled with Trump in Miami Thursday before the Liv Golf Tournament at the President of Dural Club, two sources familiar with his calendar, in particular by leaving the White House with the president on Marine One.
Susie Wiles, the Chief of the White House Staff who was one of the advisers who worked to control Loomer’s access to Trump during the campaign, was present for Wednesday’s meeting, sources familiar with Reunion said. Commerce secretary, Howard Lungick, who was seen to greet a bull before leaving the White House campus, was in Reunion for a part of it. Communications Director Steven Cheung and Vice-President JD Vance also participated, sources said.
GOP Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, a fierce defender of Trump who was also present for the meeting, brought a list of staff concerns to discuss with the president, a source told CNN. However, it was not initially planned to meet the president alongside Loomer.
We did not know when the Loomer meeting had been placed on the calendar, but an assistant said that the presence of Wiles and Gor stressed that it was a sanctioned meeting. Gor, who is considered one of the president’s most faithful aid, was among the advisers who brought Maga World complaints about Waltz.
This is not the first time that an activist has been linked to the dismissal of national security officials, stressing the influence that these voices have in Trump’s second administration.
Christopher Rofo, an activist, published internal newspapers which showed staff members Exchange explicit messages in cats of the National Safety Agency; TULSI GABBARD national intelligence director in a few days announced that she had fired people on revelations. Rofo was known to have amplified false allegations according to which Haitian immigrants ate domestic animals of residents in Ohio during the campaign by announcing a bonus of $ 5,000 for the proof of the affirmations according to which she performed in Springfield in a Publish It has been seen more than 4.6 million times.
After publication, Rofo said that “I said the opposite”, pointing to a blog He wrote by claiming to have found evidence that “some Ohio migrants seem to have” eaten cats “, but not exactly in the manner (then candidate Donald) described” in a presidential debate. He said he found evidence that African migrants in Dayton Ohio had made a cat toast.
“If this happened in Dayton, where the migrant population is relatively small, it could take place on the road in Springfield, where it is relatively much larger,” Réfo wrote in the 2024 blog post.
Loomer, who ran twice for the unanswered congress in Florida, has made a career in the controversy of the Court.
Leaving the radical right -wing online ecosystem, it has regularly tested the will of Internet companies to enforce their service conditions. She described herself once as a “proud Islamophobic” and tweeted in 2018 that “someone must create a non -Islamic form of Uber or Lyft because I never want to support another Islamic immigrant driver”. It was finally prohibited from Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, now known as X. (Loomer told CNN last fall that it was not “anti-Muslim”)))))
LOOMER – who has once published a video on social networks saying that the attack on the rounds of the World Trade Center was an “inner work” – appeared with Trump last fall when he got involved in the firefighters to observe the anniversary of the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001.
During the campaign, Loomer often appeared at events in which Trump spoke and his publications bombed on social networks sometimes seemed previewing Trump’s next attack line. Some have seen him as no coincidence That during his debate with the president of the time, Kamala Harris, Trump spoke of immigrants “eating pets” of the Ohioans, referring to the rumor broadcast online, including by Loomer, which was seen as the private plane of Trump before the debate.
Loomer also declared during the campaign that if Harris, who is half Indian, won: “The White House felt the speeches of Curry and the White House will be facilitated by a call center.”
This story has been updated with additional developments, comments from President Donald Trump, an additional context surrounding the statements that migrants ate pets in Ohio and to clarify the time of the Greeting of Lutnick with a White House loss on Wednesday.
Jeff Zelery and Kevin Liptak of CNN contributed to this report.
