LEILA FADEL, HOST:
The director of the National Security Agency and head of U.S. Cyber Command, General Timothy Haugh, has been fired. This according to top Democrats on congressional intelligence committees Senator Mark Warner of Virginia and Congressman Jim Himes of Connecticut.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The New York Times and The Washington Post are reporting that the firing is in connection to a meeting between President Trump and far-right activist Laura Loomer, during which she advocated for their dismissal. Now, I want to mention here that NPR has not independently verified this. A number of National Security Council staffers have also been fired, and President Trump is downplaying that move. Here he is talking on Air Force One last night.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Always we're letting go of people, people that we don't like or people that we don't think can do the job, or people that may have loyalties to somebody else. You'll always have that.
FADEL: Here with more on the NSC firings is NPR senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro. Hi, Domenico.
DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: Hey, good morning.
FADEL: Good morning. So what do we know about these firings?
MONTANARO: Well, Trump confirmed that there were firings at the NSC. For what, we don't know exactly. And the NSC said it wouldn't comment on personnel matters. But all this came after Trump met with Loomer. You know, she's someone who was close to Trump during the 2024 campaign, which raised some eyebrows even among those on the right because, you know, she's someone who's peddled conspiracy theories or misinformation about everything from COVID to the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas and the attempted assassination of Trump. You know, she's called herself pro-white nationalist and a white advocate, written racist things about Muslims and former Vice President Kamala Harris that I won't repeat, applauded the deaths of immigrants and a whole lot of other stuff.
You know, Trump denied that Loomer was the reason for the firings. He said that she recommended additions. But Loomer herself posted on X - one of the many platforms that she'd been banned from before Elon Musk bought it - that she did report people to Trump who she sees as disloyal to him, not necessarily to the country or Constitution. The NSA director and his deputy are among the people she called disloyal people, her evidence being that they were, she says, recommended by former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, who broke with Trump and called him a fascist.
FADEL: OK. So what's going on here? What's this all about?
MONTANARO: Well, this is the kind of thing Loomer does. You know, she's very online, far-right activist, bills herself as a, quote, "investigative journalist." But what that means is that she goes through people's social media history, their backgrounds, and connects dots that are often in conspiratorial ways and puts it all out there. In this case, Trump seemed to be taking Loomer's word over even his national security adviser, Mike Waltz. The New York Times reported that Waltz briefly defended his staff, but, quote, "it was clear he had little if any power to protect their jobs." Remember, it was Waltz or someone on his staff who inadvertently added that reporter to Signal chat group in the first place.
FADEL: That's right. So what does this say about the people Trump is surrounding himself with and who has influence over him?
MONTANARO: Yeah, it's always a question with every president who they're listening to...
FADEL: Right.
MONTANARO: ...Who their advisers are. What this tells us is this is a very different group of people around Trump now than in his first term. You know, then, there were more established, experienced people. But he really soured on those kinds of folks and moved more toward people in the right-wing ecosphere of Trump acolytes and devotees that cropped up with him out of office. And the thing is, on any given day, you just don't know who's in Trump's ear or who he's seeking out, someone with more Washington experience or someone like Loomer, and that makes for a very chaotic and destabilizing White House.
FADEL: That's NPR's Domenico Montanaro. Thank you, Domenico.
MONTANARO: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
