A recent report from The Washington Post revealed that Frank Wuco, a senior official and key player in Trump’s incredibly racist “birther” conspiracy about President Barack Obama is now working in a new capacity.
Wuco is now working in the State Department in the arms-control unit to “control the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction.”
Before he took this new post for the Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance, Wuco worked for the Department of Homeland Security, and prior to that was a highly visible conservative TV personality, appearing on multiple shows, including many times on Fox News.
Wuco became known through the years for continuing to give life to the controversial birther conspiracy- the theory that Obama was not born in the US – pushed by now-President Trump during Obama’s presidency.
Wuco has left a trail of unfortunate quotes about the matter, once saying, “While he was senator, before he ran for president, they invested over $1 million in legal fees…
There is a mechanism for having records legally sealed and the person who is in the White House right now has all the following records are sealed: his baptismal records, his birth records, his actually, his student application records to the prep school that he went to in Hawaii — which is one of the most well-heeled prep schools in Honolulu, which is not an inexpensive place to live.”
The Post points out that some of Wuco’s previous comments actually involve foreign policy, and perhaps even more alarming now given his current post, the use of nuclear weapons, Keep in mind that he now works for the State Department bureau that is “responsible for deterring conflict.”
The Post reported that Wuco said in a 2016 radio show appearance that he had a “preference” to have the US drop “a couple of low-yield tactical nuclear weapons over Afghanistan the day after 9/11 to send a definite message to the world that they had screwed up in a big way.”
With the future of US arms treaties still uncertain, the fact that someone like Wuco holds this position is cause for great concert.
The New START treaty with Russian, which puts limits on the amount of strategic nuclear warheads, is set to expire in 2021. Russia already says it is too late to negotiate a replacement treaty.
Vladimir Leontyev, a Foreign Ministry official is quoted as saying, “It’s already obvious that with the time that is left… we will not be able to work out a full-fledged replacement document.”
Trump has stated he will not make any decisions on the matter until 2020, though he has previously been in opposition to New START. T
