White House hires anti-Muslim extremist for top national security job

The Trump administration’s latest senior national security hire comes from a bigoted organization that believes there is an ongoing secret Muslim plot to take over the United States.

Fred Fleitz has been named as the executive secretary and chief of staff of the National Security Council. He was put in place by national security adviser John Bolton, who has spent the last decade on Fox News constantly pushing for wars.

Fleitz previously served as the senior vice president for Policy and Programs at the Center for Security Policy, which is designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group. He was also a columnist for FoxNews.com, where he regularly wrote opinion columns praising Trump.

The Center for Security Policy (CSP) was founded by Frank Gaffney Jr. and has espoused the belief that for years a plot has been in place by the “Muslim Brotherhood” to infiltrate the United States and its government. The Center has espoused belief in “creeping Shariah,” which would supposedly enshrine the most extremist and hardcore Islamic beliefs in American law.

The completely made up and bigoted concept has become the foundation for regular protests by conservative true believers. The practice also has the effect of demonizing over 3.3 million Muslims living within the United States.

Gaffney once invited white supremacist Jared Taylor on his radio show. While discussing Muslim migration, Gafffney asked, “Is it the death of Europe what we’re seeing at the moment in terms of this migration, this invasion?” After his dalliance with a racist was reported on, Gaffney scrubbed the interview from his website.

CSP was so far gone that at one point it was banned from the conservative CPAC conference. It did so after Gaffney accused prominent conservative activist Grover Norquist and others of sedition and of being agents of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Nowadays of course, Trump has officially put the power of the presidency behind anti-Muslim bigotry and tried to get a Muslim travel ban put in place. Gaffney and his bigoted organization were welcomed with open arms at the most recent CPAC, which featured Trump as its keynote speaker.

In fact, when Trump first pushed for the Muslim ban during the campaign, he cited a made-up poll created by the organization, which claimed 25 percent of Muslims believe in violent jihad against America. Trump said CSP was composed of “very highly respected people, who I know, actually.”

Now, so that he can continue to amplify and weaponize his hate, Trump has installed one of the organization’s most senior officials in a key national security position. Fred Fleitz and Trump have their bigotry and conspiratorial thinking completely in sync.