The first move came quickly after Inauguration Day. On Jan. 22, two days after Donald Trump’s second term began, White House National Security Advisor Mike Waltz sidelined roughly 160 National Security Council aides. It wasn’t because they’d done anything wrong; it was because the president’s operation wanted to ensure that NSC officials were “aligned” with Trump’s agenda.
Related moves soon followed. In February, the president ousted Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. CQ Brown Jr., as well as the top lawyers for the Army, Navy and Air Force. In early March, for example, Trump’s Justice Department removed at least three top national security officials, gutting the DOJ’s National Security Division.
The purge appears to be intensifying. NBC News reported:
The director and the No. 2 official at the National Security Agency were ousted from their positions Thursday, according to a defense official and three sources with knowledge of the matter. … [Air Force Gen. Timothy Haugh] was both the head of U.S. Cyber Command and the director of the National Security Agency, a role he had served in since February 2024. Wendy Noble, the NSA’s Deputy Director, was the agency’s senior civilian leader.
It’s not at all clear why this happened — Haugh had only been on the job for about a year — and the White House National Security Council did not respond to a request for comment.
There’s also some question as to who, exactly, is currently leading the National Security Agency now that it’s top two officials have been removed without explanation.
The ouster of Haugh and Noble capped a busy day of related firings: As my MSNBC colleague Allison Detzel noted, hours before the NSA’s leaders were removed from their posts, Trump also fired several members of the National Security Council, including the NSC’s director for intelligence.
And what, pray tell, precipitated these moves? As it turns out, NBC News, among several other news organizations, reported that the president started ousting members of his national security team after he met with far-right activist Laura Loomer, who “expressed dissatisfaction with some officials on his national security team.”
Indeed, after Trump fired the top two officials at the National Security Agency, Loomer took credit for their dismissals.
For those who might need a refresher, Loomer is a right-wing activist, a radical conspiracy theorist and a failed Republican congressional candidate who has described herself as “pro-white nationalism.” She was also a close confidant to Trump during the 2024 campaign — even joining the Republican for a Sept. 11 remembrance, despite the fact she’s pushed false conspiracy theories about the terrorist attacks having been “an inside job.”
In a normal, healthy administration, a president would make decisions related to national security personnel in response to advice from the White House national security advisor. In this administration, the dynamic is far more ridiculous.
As a New York Times report summarized, Loomer, who is “viewed as extreme by even some of Mr. Trump’s far-right allies, was apparently wielding more influence over the staff of the National Security Council than Mr. Waltz, who runs the agency.”
Why was there was so much focus on Trump’s partnership with Loomer during the campaign season? Because of fears she’d have outsized influence in the White House, despite — or more to the point, because of — her radical and fringe views.
Those concerns were, we now know, entirely correct.
Media Matters’ Matthew Gertz put it this way in an item published to Bluesky: “If you had said in October that if Trump were elected he’d end up purging the NSC at the behest of Laura Loomer and ordering Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to fire the director of the NSA, you’d have been accused of having a terminal case of Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
And yet, here we are.
Indeed, the president hasn’t even made much of an effort to deny Loomer’s influence, boasting to reporters late Thursday that the conspiracy theorist is “a very good patriot” who makes “recommendations” he takes seriously.
The point is not that the administration’s national security team is sacrosanct. On the contrary, in the wake of Signal chat scandal, it is easy to make the case that Trump had a responsibility to fire key members of his team, including Waltz and Hegseth. The president, to date, has refused.
But that just makes Trump’s judgment look even worse: He’s finally agreed to fire some members of his hapless national security team, but he’s fired the wrong people for the wrong reasons, while leaving in place the people who actually deserve to be ousted.
