How Did Laura Loomer Finally Earn A Spot At Donald Trump’s Side?

In May, the anti-Muslim bigot and conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer spent a couple of days with a Washington Post reporter, trying to arrange a casual run-in with Donald Trump.

Loomer, a fierce loyalist of the former president, had staked her hopes on landing a job in a future Trump White House. She wanted to demonstrate for the reporter and the world that “Trump likes me,” as she told the Post, and that she could get past his inner circle of campaign staff, who apparently saw her “as a liability” in their effort to make Trump seem less extreme, according to the paper.

Loomer failed. It seemed she was too toxic — even for a brief encounter with Trump. The Post reporter left Florida without a photo of the pair together.

Starting last Tuesday, Loomer has regularly been spotted by Trump’s side on the campaign trail, repeatedly flying with him around the country. She accompanied him to the presidential debate against Kamala Harris and was backstage at the debate with Trump’s entourage. She was in Trump’s posse in New York City and Shanksville, Pennsylvania, on Sept. 11 — despite sharing a video that claimed “9/11 was an Inside Job!” just last year.

“Donald Trump likes me,” Loomer said Saturday. “Donald Trump trusts me. OK? Obviously, he trusts me if I’m on his plane.”

The admission to Trump’s inner circle is a remarkable come-up for Loomer, who has made a brand out of being openly racist, calling herself a “proud Islamophobe” and “pro-white nationalism.”

Loomer has, for years, been a vile and unapologetic bigot, repeatedly calling for ethnically cleansing the U.S. of Muslims, referring to Black politicians by racist slurs and pushing the “Great Replacement,” the conspiracy theory that has inspired multiple white supremacist mass shootings.

Trump had certainly associated with Loomer in the past — praising her, promoting her posts on social media, even shouting out her doomed 2020 congressional campaign, when Loomer was the Republican nominee to represent Mar-a-Lago’s district in the House of Representatives.

But Trump’s people knew to keep her at arm’s length. Last year, when Trump had decided to give Loomer a job on his campaign, several people “familiar with” the story leaked the news to The New York Times, saying they were worried about “backlash.” Loomer never got the job.

In its May profile, when the Post reported that Loomer was friendly with some of Trump’s staff, it added that “no one wanted to discuss Loomer on the record.” And when Loomer recalled riding on Trump’s Boeing 757 three times in the past, the Post made sure to note, “aides recall only two.”

Rep. Lois Frankel (D-Fla.), whom Loomer unsuccessfully ran against in 2020, called it “shocking” that she’s now keeping company with Trump.

“Four years ago, the things she said were awful, inhumane, crazy,” Frankel said Monday, citing Loomer’s past claims that the 2018 Parkland high school shooting victims were crisis actors, as well as Loomer’s ugly attacks on Muslims.

“She’s only associated with the best of the extreme, or, well, the worst of the extreme,” said the Florida congresswoman. “Many, many people in this world are called ‘a little nutty’ or ‘extreme.’ But you’d never think they were advising the president of the United States.”

What changed between May and last week? The comedian Bill Maher had one salacious theory, but HuffPost decided to examine what Loomer has said and done to finally win a spot at Trump’s side.

If her public statements over the past year have one thing in common, it’s loyalty. Loomer has made elaborate displays of her allegiance to the former president. She has called for the execution of Trump’s political enemies, said a judge overseeing one of Trump’s criminal trials should be deported and pushed multiple conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.

Here’s a timeline, much of which comes from Media Matters, the liberal media watchdog group that has long documented Loomer’s fascist histrionics.

On Telegram, the encrypted messaging app popular among right-wing extremists, Loomer writes in genocidal terms about Palestinians in Gaza: “For the sake of humanity and what is righteous and good in the war on evil, Israel must level GAZA, flatten it into a parking lot, and then glass it. … Their entire existence revolves around hating and killing Jews. There is no peace with these people.”

During an episode of her show on Rumble, the live-streaming video platform also popular among right-wing extremists, Loomer calls for purging Palestinian Americans from the U.S. government, namely Maher Bitar, a member of President Joe Biden’s National Security Council, calling him one of many “Islamic infiltrators in our government.”

“Do you think that it’s acceptable to have a hostile Muslim in charge of our intel in this country?” Loomer asked. “Absolutely not.”

In a post on X (formerly Twitter), which has also become a cesspool of right-wing extremism after its takeover by billionaire Elon Musk, Loomer commemorates the three-year anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by pushing multiple conspiracy theories, including that the riots were an “inside job” perpetrated by “the FBI and other deep state bad actors” as a way of tarnishing Trump.

The rioters arrested for their part in the insurrection, Loomer says, are “patriots” and “political prisoners.”

“Personally, I think J6 should be a national holiday in which we celebrate the bravery of American patriots who protested a stolen election,” Loomer writes. “Today, please keep the J6 political prisoners and their families in your thoughts and prayers. We need to keep fighting for these patriots. And most importantly we need to make sure we get Donald Trump elected again in 2024, because he’s the only person who is going to pardon the J6ers.”

Writing on X, Loomer accuses the wife of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — then one of Trump’s Republican primary opponents — of “fake crying about having cancer.” Casey DeSantis was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2021, received chemotherapy, and was later declared cancer-free by her doctors.

A week before the GOP presidential caucus in Iowa, Loomer speculates on X about whether a snowstorm forecast to hit the state was the result of “weather manipulation” perpetrated by the “deep state” and Nikki Haley, one of Trump’s primary opponents.

“Is the Deep State using HAARP to rig the Iowa Caucus?” she writes, referring to the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program, a military project researching the weather which has long been the subject of unhinged conspiracy theories, including from InfoWars’ Alex Jones (a longtime Loomer ally).

“Looks like weather manipulation to me,” Loomer writes. “Take a look at this weather radar below, and how the incoming snow storm accelerated out of nowhere.”

Loomer, speaking on Rumble, calls Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Black woman serving in Congress, a “black dog” whose “district is literally Somalia.” Omar, a Muslim and Somali American, has long been the target of vitriolic bigotry from Trump and others in the MAGA universe, but Loomer goes further than most.

Loomer says that she “really does believe in IQ science” — a euphemism for race science, the belief that certain races are inherently superior to others — and that “some of the people that have the lowest IQs are Somalis,” who she claims are “so inbred that they have an IQ that is legally classified as mental retardation.” She also falsely states that Omar’s relatives “sleep in caves and have sex with goats.”

Omar’s Somali immigrant constituents, Loomer rants, are “modern-day jihadi welfare queens” who are “breeding like rabbits.”

“I guess they’ve never heard of something called birth control,” Loomer says. “Unfortunate for us. Unfortunate for Western civilization.”

On Rumble, Loomer says that “people like” Mehdi Hasan — the popular former MSNBC news host who happens to be Muslim and a critic of the Israeli bombardment of Gaza — need to be forcibly deported from the U.S.

“He is absolutely despicable, and people like him need to be removed from this country, OK?” Loomer says. “They need to be purged from this country because we have a national security problem in this country, and we need to purge and deport all jihadists and their sympathizers from this country, or else we’re gonna have another 9/11 on steroids … And I know that Republicans are scared because they don’t wanna be called an Islamophobe, and they don’t wanna be called anti-Muslim, and they don’t wanna be called all these things. I don’t care.”

On Rumble, Loomer pushes the so-called Great Replacement theory — the white supremacist belief that immigration into the U.S. and European countries amounts to an extinction-level event for white people. The racist conspiracy theory has been cited in the writings of multiple white supremacist mass shooters, including in the “manifestos” of the men who killed 51 Muslim people at mosques in New Zealand, 22 mostly Latino people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas; and 11 Jewish worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue.

Loomer warns that “Third Worlders from shitholes” are “replacing us,” adding: “This is a replacement strategy, not just to replace white Americans and replace the majority population in our country, but also to replace our votes as American voters.”

On Rumble, Loomer calls for the imprisonment of the secretaries of state who attempted to remove Trump from the presidential ballot over his multiple criminal indictments — attempts that ultimately failed after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

“And so, again, I don’t care if people get offended by this, I have my two middle fingers up. One for Jena Griswold and one for Shenna Bellows tonight,” Loomer says, referring to the secretaries of state for Colorado and Maine, respectively. “And, you know, if I had more middle fingers, I would put them up too. But, that’s where all of these communist secretaries of state who try to rig our elections, they belong in jail for election interference…”

After going on a long anti-immigrant rant, Loomer says it’s likely that native-born Americans are going to resort to violence targeting those new to U.S. shores. “I’m not gonna care when it happens…” Loomer says. “They’re pushing people to the brink.”

Loomer hosts well-known white nationalist Peter Brimelow, of the racist organization VDare, on her Rumble show. During the course of the interview Loomer calls Vice President Harris, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and New York Attorney General Letitia James “ghetto Black women” and “three angry Black women who are clearly targeting successful white men.” (Willis had brought criminal charges against Trump in Georgia, and James had sued Trump and his organization for fraud.)

“There’s a lot of angry Black women out there in positions of authority,” Brimelow says in response. “And there’s a real question for whether they can be trusted.”

Appearing as a guest on Lauren Chen’s “Pseudo-Intellectual LIVE,” a far-right show streamed on YouTube, Loomer calls for a “full-blown immigration moratorium,” arguing that “nationalism keeps you safe. Profiling keeps you safe. Discrimination keeps you safe.”

“I am against immigration,” she says. “I don’t want any more immigration in my country right now.”

Appearing as a guest on the John Fredericks show on Rumble, Loomer lashes out at Jews who don’t support Trump. Loomer, who is Jewish, is upset over college campus protests against the Israeli siege of Gaza — which has now killed over 40,000 Palestinians — equating the demonstrations with antisemitism. She’s also upset at Democrats for offering even the mildest criticism of Israel’s destruction of the occupied territory.

“If you’re a Democrat and you’re voting as a Jew or a Democrat, then you kind of deserve what’s coming your way,” Loomer says. “These are like the Jews during the times of the Holocaust who assisted the Nazis because they thought that they were gonna be the last to go. These are like the kapo Jews of the Holocaust, John, who helped shovel Jews inside the gas chambers and shovel Jews inside the cable cars. OK? That’s what these people are. That’s basically what modern Democrat Jews are. They’re kapo Jews. You might as well just go put yourself in a gas chamber yourself if this is how you’re gonna behave. Because the crocodile might eat you last, but the crocodile is still going to eat you. And I don’t care how inflammatory that sounds… If you’re a Jew and you vote for Joe Biden and you do not vote for Donald Trump, then you kind of deserve what’s coming your way. It’s not going to be pleasant.”

(It bears repeating here that Loomer is a close friend and ally of white supremacist Nick Fuentes, who has openly expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler and who has called for the execution of non-Christians, including “perfidious Jews.”)

In a racist X post, Loomer calls Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), who is Black, “GHETTO DEI SHANIQUA.”

Writing another racist screed on X, Loomer calls Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.), who is also Black, a “ghetto black woman who can barely speak English.”

On Rumble, Loomer appears to double down on comments she made during an appearance on YouTuber Tim Pool’s show calling for the execution of Democrats.

“If you are found guilty of treason, the punishment is death,” Loomer says. “I know that you’re gonna clip what I said tonight, and you’re gonna say, ‘See, look. Laura Loomer did say she wants to execute Democrats.’ No. I said that we need to follow the Constitution, and the Constitution outlines that if you are found guilty of treason, the punishment is death. And there’s a lot of people, a lot of your friends, Joe Biden, a lot of your associates who would qualify for the death penalty.”

After Trump becomes the first former president to be convicted of felony crimes when a New York City jury finds him guilty on 34 charges related to a hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels, Loomer calls for the judge in the trial, Juan Merchan, to be deported.

“Personally, I think that when Donald Trump gets elected to office again for a third time, he’s gotta strip Juan Merchan of his citizenship and deport him back to the Third World hellhole he came from,” Loomer says. “I don’t know. If you’re in favor of Juan Merchan having his citizenship revoked and being deported back to Colombia, press one in the chat, because I would love to see Juan Merchan get deported back to Colombia where he came from.”

Merchan, a U.S. citizen, moved to the U.S. from Colombia when he was 6 years old.

In a series of racist posts on X, Loomer celebrates the death of Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), calling the progressive Black congresswoman a “ghetto bitch.”

“Even on her death bed, this ghetto bitch couldn’t keep President Trump’s name out of her disgusting mouth,” Loomer writes, referring to some of the late congresswoman’s final posts on X. “I’d say rest in peace, but we all know lying democrats who have destroyed our country are going to hell. Sheila Jackson Lee will be remembered as a destructive force in America and one of the most low IQ members of Congress in the history of our nation.”

“Good riddance,” Loomer adds.

In a false and vicious post on Rumble, Loomer calls Harris a “brain-dead bimbo who sucked so much cock in order to get to the political position that she’s in today.”

Ahead of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Loomer spreads an outrageous rumor.

“I hear that a black, trans doctor will be performing an abortion on a white woman LIVE on stage at the DNC Convention in Chicago this August,” Loomer writes on X.

Responding to a video purportedly showing Venezuelan government forces firing on “unarmed protesters,” Loomer writes that “Kamala Harris and @TheDemocrats will do the same thing to unarmed Americans if they steal the election this year.”

“Never let the Democrats take away your guns,” Loomer adds. “I bet @KamalaHarris is already plotting on how she can murder as many Trump supporters as possible if she steals the election.”

In an X post featuring Harris’ birth certificate, Loomer falsely says the document shows that Harris “is NOT black and never has been.” The document shows Harris’ father is Jamaican.

Loomer says that Harris’ pick of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as the Democratic vice presidential nominee is part of the “Islamo-fascist communist takeover of the Western world and the United States of America.” If Harris wins, Loomer tells her audience, “we are going to have an Islamic caliphate in this country.”

Loomer writes in a racist post trafficking in stereotypes about South Asians that if Harris is elected president, “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.”

Asked about Loomer’s comments on “Meet the Press,” Vance — whose wife is Indian American — responds, “I make a mean chicken curry, I don’t think that it’s insulting for anybody to talk about their dietary preferences or what they want to do in the White House.”

“Do I agree with what Laura Loomer said about Kamala Harris?” Vance adds later his answer. “No, I don’t. I also don’t think that this is actually an issue of national import. Is Laura Loomer running for president? No. Kamala Harris is running for president, and whether you’re eating curry at your dinner table or fried chicken, things have gotten more expensive thanks to her policies.”