Will Sommer (2:54)

Yes, I mean, I think that's. That's right. We can see how these figures who are just, you know, you would imagine sort of just shooting off these posts into oblivion. In fact, they're able to, to gain, you know, some, some amount of credence in the White House. And I think also here it's curious, I'm wondering how a lot of the stuff she's been posting is almost like, read like opposition research or something. I'm curious about if she's getting this from rival factions in the White House or the National Security Council. This idea that if we could just convince Trump to get rid of this person and this person, our more. Perhaps America first faction would gain more power.

Tim Miller (3:30)

Yeah, okay. So you never have to hand it to Laura Loomer, but I'm gonna do it anyway on two points. All right. Number one, for longtime viewers of the feed, you will know that when Kari Lake accosted me at a bar in Phoenix, Laura Loomer was the peacemaker. That's a real thing that happened. So I appreciated that. Thank you, Laura. Second peacemaker, the de escalator maybe rather than peacemaker, she kind of told Kerry to take a chill pill. In addition to that, the other thing I got to hand to her is that while whatever you think, and I think pretty negatively about her foreign policy worldview, et cetera, and that of the America first people at large. It is true that the Trump national security team had a notable number of people that had more traditional old school Republican views. Mike Waltz was. And the word neocon has kind of lost its descriptive value because it's been used as a pejorative for so long, but was essentially a Bush neocon type on foreign policy, bipartisan type. And I had Tom Malinowski on the podcast a while back, who's a Democratic national, tough on national security Democrat. And he was just like so disappointed in Waltz because said that like him and Waltz had seen eye to eye on so much and Waltz had kind of flipped to get in Trump's world. So. And then obviously there's Marco Rubio at Secretary of State, some of the staffers that Waltz brought on. So it's not, not true. Like at least that like narrow point that Loomer is making that Trump has some people around him in the national security world who are maybe more aligned or at least had been more aligned with like the traditional Bush like worldview than the America first worldview.

Will Sommer (5:13)

Yeah, I mean I think what we're seeing is this idea that Mike Waltz is weak after signal gate and so maybe he's not going to get fired, but that, that people undermining him see this as an opportunity to strike and kind of clear out some of his deputies.

Tim Miller (5:26)

Yeah. So who. Are there any names that have been mentioned that Laura's been going after?

Will Sommer (5:29)

Yeah, so she's really been on a tear. I mean like she, she was just like, there's a trans staffer. We gotta find out who this trans staffer is and get him out. Is that true? Yeah, no. I mean she didn't even have the name in that case. She was just like, I hear there's a trans person, let's get him. You know, and I mean she's posting this publicly and that's, that's who's meeting with Trump. It's crazy. There was another guy who, last name Kanapathy who had worked with like previously worked with some intel official who signed the, you know, the Hunter Biden laptop is disinformation letter. And, and so there's kind of like this like very strained guilt by association. And then the big one is a guy named Alex Wong who is the deputy national security director or advisor. And basically she's really been focusing most of her fire on him, her arguments that he's, you know, I mean she basically alleged that he's a Chinese spy and that he was somehow involved in the signal fiasco to embarrass Trump. She was really basically no evidence of this. She says, well his, his wife was a prosecutor and she prosecuted some J6 people. And then his father in law was a large stakeholder in a big Chinese tech company, you know, perhaps, but I mean at the same time one imagines that goes into the security clearance and everything. And so it really feels like, I guess for me looking at it like it's just basically like let's get rid of this guy because he's of Chinese descent.

Tim Miller (6:49)

Certainly you could never go wrong assuming that motivations are related to racism here in Magaworld. I think there's another level of this though. Particularly with Alex Wong, I hadn't followed this as closely as you did, so I'm interested that he is one of the main targets. I got to tell you, when he got hired from that job, I raised an eyebrow. It surprised me because I'd worked with Alex in 2012. He was a young but kind of up and coming person in Romney world. And at the time, obviously this happened to a lot of my former colleagues where it's like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. There's definitely been Invasion of the Body Snatchers for some people that I used to work with. But Alex, even into the Trump world, from afar I watched him, he seemed still to be a pretty even keel kind of traditional conservative views on most things. Adapting where you need to for maga, kind of more in the, I don't know what, like three years ago, Rubio mold type. And so when he got that job, when somebody told me that he did back in January, I was like, that's just a weird fit. And I don't know if that works. And I've had several people text me who are not Laura Loomer types, who are regular people who don't have any evidence and they're not really making an accusation, but they're like, they wouldn't be surprised if Alex Wong had Jeffrey Goldberg's number in his phone. Right. If he's Waltz's deputy. If you're kind of going to start looking around for how did Jeffrey Goldberg get into this would not be a crazy person to look at because it's like he's been a traditional, strong unnational security kind of Republican that is like, kind of. And Jeffrey Goldberg has a lot of those types of people as his sources. Right. So it is one of those scenarios where it's like, you know, the MAGA folks see a staffer that like does not fit their crazy ilk and like, rather than like try to make a policy argument, you see them falling back on, I guess, you know, Kung flu type, anti China attacks.

Will Sommer (8:56)

Yeah. I mean, you can see that there's, you know, I don't think it's an accident that she previously, Laura hadn't like really focused a lot on like the personnel of the National Security Council. So I think there are agendas at play here. And you know, this is also something that doesn't. I don't think the MAGA base is like, talk to me about the deputy undersecretary or whatever, you know, and so I think this is really an argument for Trump that she's making man wild times.

Tim Miller (9:21)

Well, I'm going to tell you, Laura Loomer, I guess having enough influence over the President of the United States to get members of the National Security Council fired. Not like random people in the Department of Commerce, the National Security Council. The staffing there is being dictated by the online. Right. I'm glad you're out there monitoring it for us. All right, everybody else, subscribe to the feed. We'll be seeing you soon.