Frank Wuco
CNN  — 

A senior adviser at the State Department once said he thought then-President Barack Obama was a Kenyan and called House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi a Nazi whose Botox had worn off.

Frank Wuco, a former conservative speaker and radio host who is now a senior adviser at the State Department’s Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance, also said it would be tough for a “solid, practicing” Muslim to be a good American and made unfounded claims that some Muslims in America were practicing Sharia law to create “Muslim land.”

Wuco’s comments, which span from 2009 to 2016, were unearthed by CNN’s KFile during a review of his media appearances and public writings.

Wuco has a history of peddling conspiracy theories, pushing for extreme American action in warfare and spreading anti-Muslim rhetoric. CNN’s KFile previously reported that Wuco interviewed authors promoting birtherism and pushed other conspiracy theories on prominent Obama administration officials.

Wuco had a career as a radio host and pundit before joining the Trump administration in 2017. During that time, Wuco frequently cited his past experience in the Navy to promote himself as an expert on jihad and military matters, such as when he expressed his personal belief that nuclear weapons should have been used in Afghanistan the day after 9/11.

Wuco was previously a White House adviser at the Department of Homeland Security. His new role at the State Department was first reported by the Washington Post last month. The State Department’s Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance mission statement says it is responsible for “deterring conflict” and working to build “cooperation among allies and partners in order to control the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction.”

The State Department and Wuco did not respond to requests for comment.

Called Obama a Kenyan and Pelosi a Nazi

During Wuco’s career as a conservative talk show host from 2011 to 2013, he frequently belittled and mocked Democratic leadership and liberals on his platforms.

At a 2013 event with Tea Party supporters, Wuco gave a speech critical of Obama. After a man from the crowd shouted that Obama was “a plagiarizer,” Wuco responded: “I thought he was a Kenyan!”

Wuco used his platform as a radio host to promote the debunked conspiracy theory that Obama was not born in the US and questioned whether Obama sounded “super ethnic” for a man who knew “nothing about the black American experience.”

On an episode of The Frank Wuco Show in 2011, Wuco called Pelosi “Nancy Nazi Pelosi” and mocked her appearance, saying that her “Botox” had worn off. He likened the moment to a “Darth Vader” reveal, alluding to the iconic Star Wars villain removing his helmet.

“Seeing her last night, it made me think – I’ll have to ask my brother-in-law who’s a plastic surgeon if this is true,” he said. “But I’m telling you that Botox has got to have an expiration date on it. No, I’m not talking about Botox in the bottle. I am talking about Botox in your face. And apparently from what I saw last night, it’s not a gradual expiration.”

Questioned if you could be a good American and a good Muslim

Wuco has publicly and loudly pushed anti-Muslim views in his radio appearances and writings for well over a decade.

Wuco said some Muslim American communities called “for the application of Sharia law” so the community would become “Muslim land.” Wuco called the city of Karachi, Pakistan, one of the largest Muslim cities in the world, a “pit of filth, poverty, human despair, that is about as good as Pakistani cities get” in a blog post in 2010. He referred to French Muslim women as “hijab hysterical.”

“Muslims here in the United States and in many European countries create sort of these enclave communities. They move into an area, they sort of concentrate their presence in a certain area – and a lot of that is good, old fashioned, just people wanting to be near people that they’re familiar with culturally and religiously and all that stuff,” he said on AM Tampa Bay in 2014.

“Another piece of it, if you want to go even deeper, is you’ve seen a lot of these densely populated Muslim areas where in some cases they actually start calling for the application of Sharia law in these areas,” he added. “If you want it to carry it to the furthest extreme where you have an area that has densely populated with Muslims, where they’re able to manage to get Sharia law applied in Islamic theology, that then becomes Muslim land.

In the same appearance, Wuco was asked if it is possible to be a “good American and a good Muslim.”

He paused before answering, “That’s a tough one.” Wuco said that in the eyes of theological purists like ISIS, “It’s impossible to be a good anything and a good Muslim because in Islamic theology, you’re everything Islamic – people, the land, the property is all in the house of Islam. You don’t have a nationality. You’re a Muslim.”

He added, “So I would say no. If you’re a purist and you’re a real, good, solid, practicing Muslim it becomes very, very tough.”

Wuco also expressed disbelief of any backlash against Muslim Americans after a terrorist incident or suspected terrorist arrests in America.

“There IS NO BACKLASH. And is that our biggest concern, REALLY??? Backlash??? How about the backlash of fear among YOUR FELLOW AMERICAN CITIZENS, that they are AFRAID TO GO TO THE MALL, the MALL!!! Mall owners are now spending $10,000′s on a public campaign to calm shoppers that they are not going to be the victims of a jihad-inspired mass murder while they do a little early Christmas shopping,” Wuco wrote in a blog post from October 2009.

“WE are a good society! We don’t murder, maim, and harass ethnic groups writ large (a PLEASE, if you hit me with the slavery issue or what befell the American Indians in the 19th Century, I’ll delete your ridiculous post),” he continued.

Wuco said US military actions in war should be censored from the public

Wuco frequently spoke and wrote about the military over the years. In an interview with the Dougherty Report radio show in 2016, Wuco contended that war needs to be censored from everyday Americans.

“People at home shouldn’t be seeing warfare. Warfare is a very ugly thing. It needs to be done in an extremely ugly and violent way,” he said. “I believe that war should be censored.”

“There are things in war that defy common sense,” he continued. “There are things in war that defy common decency. It’s war. So, you don’t want to direct all of your energy answering questions on why you did something horrific in wartime when war is entirely horrific. Either it is or it isn’t. There’s no nice way to do warfare.”