Even Trump’s Inner Circle Is Scared of Laura Loomer

With just seven weeks to go before the presidential election, Donald Trump has awarded one of his most volatile associates a prime position in his inner circle, flying her on his plane to the Philadelphia debate and bringing her to various 9/11 memorial events. All of a sudden, Laura Loomer is seemingly everywhere, and while she has been in Trump’s orbit for years — the 31-year-old conspiracy theorist and agitator is a frequent visitor at Mar-a-Lago — her recent omnipresence reportedly has many conservatives worried. Loomer’s politics are extreme, even when measured against the far-right drift of today’s GOP. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, for example, recently criticized Loomer’s rhetoric as “appalling and extremely racist.”

It’s not immediately clear what role, if any, Loomer plays in Trump’s reelection strategy. She told the Associated Press that she was invited on his Pennsylvania trip “as a guest,” while the former president himself has stated that she “doesn’t work for the Campaign.” Although Trump reportedly wanted to hire Loomer last year, his aides dissuaded him, arguing that she is too far on the fringes, too polarizing, too unpredictable.

“I don’t control Laura. Laura has to say what she wants,” Trump recently said. “I can’t tell Laura what to do.” He sees her as a “free spirit” with “strong opinions,” and she may well be those things. At the same time, she is also a woman who once handcuffed herself to Twitter HQ while wearing a Star of David; who tried to vote under Huma Abedin’s name while wearing a burka; and who recently ate dog food and posted about it on X. Below, a primer on the “private citizen” tailing Trump.

Who is Laura Loomer?

A conspiracy theorist and MAGA activist, Loomer is a former employee of both Alex Jones’s Infowars and Project Veritas, the conservative group infamous for its misleadingly edited sting videos. She first gained national attention when she disrupted a 2017 performance of Julius Caesar in New York, claiming that it normalized “political violence against the right.” She has since made two unsuccessful bids for office, running for a Florida congressional seat in 2020 and a state House seat in 2022. Currently, she hosts a show called Loomer Unleashed on far-right-favorite video platform Rumble, where she shares political commentary. A self-described “proud Islamophobe” and “white advocate,” Loomer holds extremist views that skew heavily xenophobic and white supremacist. Her opinions have gotten her banned from certain social-media sites: Facebook kicked her off in 2019, and the year before that, Twitter did the same over posts in which she called Representative Ilhan Omar “anti-Jewish” and “pro-FGM,” or female genital mutilation, because she is Muslim. In protest of the latter, she handcuffed herself to the front door of the company’s New York headquarters, claiming that she had been banned for being a “Jewish conservative journalist” and wearing a yellow Star of David in service of the stunt. When Elon Musk took over the site and rebranded it as X, it reinstated her account.

What are some of her favorite conspiracy theories?

Loomer has advanced a number of out-there claims on topics ranging from the 9/11 terror attacks to mass shootings to COVID. Last year, she said on X that 9/11 was an “inside job” orchestrated by the U.S. government. She’s alleged that Antifa and/or ISIS committed the deadly 2017 rampage at a country-music festival in Las Vegas and suggested a 2018 shooting in Santa Fe, New Mexico, was a hoax. In one particularly hard-to-follow 2023 conspiracy theory, she linked Taylor Swift, billionaire George Soros, Travis Kelce, and the Pfizer vaccine to the 2024 election.

More recently, Loomer has told her X followers that President Joe Biden was on death’s door (she said he was actively “dying, and … dying fast”); accused Soros’s son of being involved in the July assassination attempt on Trump; and spread the baseless claim that, during the presidential debate, Democratic nominee Kamala Harris piped outside advice into her ears via her pearl studs.

But arguably, Loomer’s most recognizable efforts — at least right now — have been in advancing the racist lie that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, have been stealing and eating their neighbors’ pets. This rumor apparently exploded out of a Facebook post in which a Springfield woman speculated, without any evidence, that a Haitian immigrant may have taken her neighbor’s missing cat. While local authorities insist there have not been any reports to back up the idea that residents are killing one another’s companion animals, high-profile Republicans have continued to fan the flames. While she’s far from the only figure on the right to throw her weight behind the conspiracy — Trump’s running mate, Ohio senator J.D. Vance, has latched on to it; ditto Senator Ted Cruz and of course Trump himself — Loomer has been dutifully spreading memes about it online.

Speaking of pets: You mentioned something about Laura Loomer and dog food?

I did. In September, Loomer (gamely, it must be said) fulfilled a brand-sponsorship agreement with the dog-food company Pawsitive, sampling one of its “high-quality, human-grade treats” live on air. Pawsitive is one in a trio of random-to-me products that Rumble launched over the summer. It reportedly sent merchandise to select conservative influencers, Loomer included. “I just ate dog food,” Loomer captioned the footage she posted to X. “It’s human grade. Which means you and your dog can share a tasty, nutrient-dense treat together.” The dog-food topper Loomer tried was a combination of bison liver, heart, and kidney, which may not be to everyone’s tastes.

Does Loomer even have dogs?

She does. She has two; one named Mecca — “a rescue from a Chinese meat market,” according to her — and another named Loomer.

Why is she suddenly glued to Trump’s side?

Again, it’s not immediately clear. As Loomer and the Trump campaign have both emphasized, she isn’t on staff. “She’s a private citizen and longtime supporter,” Trump explained on Truth Social when faced with pushback over Loomer’s high visibility. “I disagree with the statements she made but, like the many millions of people who support me, she is tired of watching the Radical Left Marxists and Fascists violently attack and smear me, even to the point of doing anything to stop their Political Opponent, ME!” If that clears anything up for you.

How does the rest of the party feel about Trump and Loomer’s relationship?

Mostly bad, it seems. A suite of GOP politicians spoke out against Trump’s alliance with Loomer this past week, many of them latching on to comments she made about Harris. If Harris wins, Loomer posted, “the White House will smell like curry & White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center and the American people will only be able to convey their feedback through a customer satisfaction survey at the end of the call that nobody will understand.” (Harris’s mother was Indian.) The comment went too far even for Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who posted on X, “This is appalling and extremely racist. It does not represent who we are as Republicans or MAGA. This does not represent President Trump. This type of behavior should not be tolerated ever.”

One might think Greene and Loomer would get along due to their shared love of conspiracy theories and Trump. But Greene has previously called Loomer “mentally unstable and a documented liar” and urged Trump not to “hire or do business with” her. Similarly, Republican senator Thom Tillis called Loomer “a crazy conspiracy theorist who regularly utters disgusting garbage intended to divide Republicans,” while Senator Lindsey Graham described her statements as “beyond disturbing” and “toxic.”

According to the Washington Post, Graham took issue with Loomer’s harassment of Claudia Conway, the 19-year-old daughter of Kellyanne Conway, who was a senior aide in the Trump administration. In the wake of Trump’s criminal conviction, Claudia criticized the former president on X; Loomer laid into the teenager, calling out her Playboy shoot and calling her a “low IQ, highly sexually promiscuous woman with daddy issues,” among other things. That beef is ongoing, with Claudia most recently having called Loomer “racist, hateful, and a classic case of attention-seeking.”

With respect to her other critics, Loomer declined to apologize for the remarks about Harris, or, as she put it, “having a sense of humor.”

“It’s interesting how the media wants to, once again, falsely accuse me of being a racist,” Loomer told CNN. “This is a woman who is on video cooking Indian food with Indian celebrities talking about how she likes cooking with curry.”

Still, even Trump’s “allies” don’t see it that way. Several told NBC News they had warned the former president that continued association with Loomer could cost him crucial battleground states. “She has to go. Laura Loomer cannot stay. She just can’t. She is unapologetic,” one purportedly complained to the outlet, while another said Trump had been told that “If you don’t fix this, it will be a problem.”