Right-wing pundit Frank Wuco, a senior Department of Homeland Security (DHS) adviser who has worked on President Donald Trump’s travel ban, repeatedly warned audiences during his media appearances that Muslims are dangerous because their core faith purportedly instructs them that they can’t “coexist peacefully with other religions.”

“[There’s] a critical misunderstanding of the true nature of Islam, which was never intended to coexist, to complement, to mingle with other faiths,” he told one radio program in 2010. “It is clearly stated in the law, in the traditions, in the Quran, that Islam is here to abrogate all faiths that came before, was sent to abrogate and cleanse the corruption of the Jews and the Christians that are found in the previous scriptures.”

“So many have bought in hook, line, and sinker into the Muslim propaganda, particularly generated by the Muslim Brotherhood, that this is a -- yeah, it’s a religion that seeks cohabitation and tolerance and peace with non-Muslim faith groups and nationalities and it just simply is not true,” Wuco said in 2012 while discussing events surrounding the Muslim Brotherhood.  

He added: “To say that Islam is willing to coexist peacefully with other religions and other sort of nationalities, if you can have such a thing in Islam, is really antithetical to what the Quran and what Sharia law teaches.”

Wuco entered the administration in January 2017 as a senior White House adviser at DHS. He has also served as the executive director of DHS’ Executive Order Task Force, which was organized to implement Trump’s orders to the agency, which include his ban on travelers from some Muslim-majority countries. DHS did not reply to a request for comment about Wuco. 

Earlier this month, Politico obtained DHS records through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit which contained emails about the agency deploying a “‘crisis action team’ to enforce first Trump travel ban” and indicated Wuco's involvement in the department. As Kristin G. Şekerci‏, a research fellow at Georgetown’s Bridge Initiative noted, Wuco was “CCed on many of the DHS emails released through FOIA."

Wuco has a long history of other anti-Muslims remarks, which is summarized below. He suggested in 2014 that banning visas from “Muslim nations” is “one of these sort of great ideas that can never happen”; warned that Muslims “by-and-large” will “subjugate and humiliate non-Muslim members” and enact Sharia law; and praised the surveillance of mosques as a key tool to finding “out what's going on” in the Muslim community.

As HuffPost’s Christopher Mathias reported in March 2017, when Wuco was a right-wing pundit, he delivered presentations “as a fictional character he created named Fuad Wasul,” who had a “heavy Arabic accent” and was a “committed jihadist.”

Wuco has also made numerous anti-LGBTQ remarks as a pundit. He said in 2016 that “societies and nations for millennia have suffered greatly” for LGBTQ acceptance because those places have no “cultural” and “moral center.” He smeared transgender people as sick individuals who suffer from a “malady” and lead a “horrible existence," and claimed it would be “great” to pretend to be transgender to “go into the women’s shower” at the gym. Wuco made those remarks during radio appearances with Charles Butler, a virulently anti-LGBTQ host who twice used the anti-gay slur “faggots” during one of Wuco’s segments (Wuco did not directly respond to Butler's use of the slurs but appeared again on the show later that year).

CNN’s KFile also reported that Wuco repeatedly promoted fringe conspiracy theories about former President Barack Obama and officials in his administration and pushed false claims “that Obama was not born in the US,” made other disparaging comments about the LGBTQ community, and lamented what he called the “Zimbabwe-fication of America.”

Here is a summary of the anti-Muslim remarks Wuco has made over the years.

Wuco praised the surveillance of mosques as key to finding “out what's going on” in the Muslim community. During a November 2015 Fox News appearance, Wuco said that a “mosque surveillance” program is key to finding “out what's going on behind the walls” of “mosques and Islamic reading centers.” He added that after the cancellation of a mosque surveillance program in New York City, he “can only hope that some of these programs continue with other agencies.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends Weekend, 11/14/15, via Media Matters]

Wuco: Muslims “by-and-large” will “subjugate and humiliate non-Muslim members” and enact Sharia law. Wuco warned on his now-defunct radio show website that “Muslim populations by-and-large will become enclave societies that, first, resist assimilation and then, will make every effort to establish independent rule for their enclaves under Shari’ah law.” [Need To Know, 2/27/10, via Internet Archive and Media Matters]

Wuco: “If you're a Muslim, you believe” that “violence and warfare against unbelievers” is “prescribed by God.” Following the June 2016 mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, FL, Wuco told Breitbart.com of shooter Omar Mateen: “There's nothing radical about him at all. He is a Muslim who is following the strictures of Islam and its guidance and prescriptions for violence and warfare against unbelievers. … If you're a Muslim, you believe it's being prescribed by God and it’s being ordained by the wisdom of Muhammad.” [Politico, 2/7/17; YouTube, 6/13/16, via Media Matters]

Wuco: “Right-thinking" Muslims “engage in jihad” because of their religion. Wuco said of Islam during an interview on an internet radio program: “If you’re a right-thinking Muslim, the inspiration, the motivation, to engage in jihad doesn’t come from Al Qaeda, or doesn’t come from Inspire magazine. It comes from God himself.” [The Liberty NewsCast with Willie Lawson, 4/30/13, via Media Matters]

Wuco: “The assertiveness of Muslim communities in western nations is becoming so pronounced. … You don’t even need ISIS in Sweden.” While speaking on a radio program, Wuco warned that Muslims are infiltrating communities in Western nations: “The assertiveness of Muslim communities in Western nations is becoming so pronounced. … You don’t even need ISIS in Sweden, you’ve got every day run-of-the-mill Muslims in massive communities protesting and becoming violent with the Swedish government, saying that they’re going to take over the country. This isn’t even ISIS. These are just peace-loving Muslims who have been allowed to immigrate into these countries.” [The Dougherty Report, 1/18/16, via Media Matters]

Wuco in 2014: Halting visas from “Muslim nations” is one of “these sort of great ideas that can never happen.” During an August 2014 Fox News program, Wuco responded to comments from Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) about a ban on visas from the Middle East, saying that the proposed policy is “one of these sort of great ideas that can never happen. ... You're just not going to stop the visa application process into this country from Muslim nations in a blanket type of policy.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 8/28/14, via Media Matters]

Wuco frequently delivered presentations “as a fictional character he created named Fuad Wasul,” who had a “heavy Arabic accent.” HuffPost’s Christopher Mathias wrote in March 2017:

Wuco’s dim portrayal of Muslims has also veered into the bizarre.



During his work as a security consultant and radio host, Wuco often gave presentations as a fictional character he created named Fuad Wasul ― a “committed jihadist” escaped from an American military prison to help westerners understand what motivates Muslim fighters.



Wuco, who is from Florida, would role-play as Wasul, delivering the presentations with a “heavy Arabic accent,” according to a 2008 Florida news report.

“If you think you’re winning this war, if you think that you’re defeating jihad, you’re wrong, dead wrong,” Wasul (Wuco) once told a room full of civilian analysts working for military intelligence at MacDill Air Force Base. [HuffPost, 3/16/17]

Mother Jones: Wuco has suggested that “terrorism would be consistent with Islamic scripture.” Mother Jones’ Noah Lanard wrote in November 2017: “In the battle with the West, Wuco suggested, terrorism would be consistent with Islamic scripture. After a plot to kill the Pope was foiled in 2010, his website cited two suras, or chapters, from the Koran to explain the plotters’ motivation.” [Mother Jones, 11/1/17]

Wuco said “the true nature of Islam … never intended to coexist, to complement, to mingle with other faiths.”

FRANK WUCO: I’m afraid that President Obama is horribly mistaken in his tendency to believe, take at face value everything he learned from his Muslim friends in Chicago, largely an incredible group of apologists and vehement anti-Israelis, anti-Jewish, segment of the population. Whatever he learned when he was in Indonesia, which may not have been much, because he was a fairly young fellow when he was there at the time.

But I believe it’s culminated in a critical misunderstanding of the true nature of Islam, which was never intended to coexist, to complement, to mingle with other faiths. It is clearly stated in the law, in the traditions, in the Quran, that Islam is here to abrogate all faiths that came before, was sent to abrogate and cleanse the corruption of the Jews and the Christians that are found in the previous scriptures. So Islam abrogates all prior scriptures. Islam abrogates all prior faiths. And the goal of jihad, the goal is to bring as much of the living world, of the material world into the Islamic system as possible before the final day of judgement. So, for us to assume that the reason that the jihadists do what they do is only because they’re emotionally angry with us is really an insult to the commitment to jihad, if i’m the jihadist. [Blog Talk Radio, The Willie Lawson Show, 8/10/10]

Wuco: It’s “Muslim propaganda” that Islam is “a religion that seeks cohabitation and tolerance and peace with non-Muslim faith groups and nationalities.”

ERSKINE: So, that’s why we’re having problems with a lot of the Christians being persecuted again in Egypt, and a lot of the situations that are going on right now in the Middle East. So this was nothing that we should have been cheering about as so many in the news service were doing.  

FRANK WUCO: Well, part of the reason is that so many have bought in hook, line, and sinker into the Muslim propaganda, particularly generated by the Muslim Brotherhood, that this is a -- yeah, it’s a religion that seeks cohabitation and tolerance and peace with non-Muslim faith groups and nationalities and it just simply is not true. To say that Islam is willing to coexist peacefully with other religions and other sort of nationalities, if you can have such a thing in Islam, is really antithetical to what the Quran and what Sharia law teaches. [Erskine Overnight, 7/21/12]