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Laura Loomer, Trump’s Blunt Instrument
LUARA LOOMER, TRUMP'S BLUNT INSTRUMENT
Since President Trump assumed office, numerous battles have unfolded, but one significant conflict highlights the president’s willingness to entertain previously marginalized perspectives. This involves the efforts of some of his aides to manage Laura Loomer.
Ms. Loomer, a right-wing provocateur known for her blatant Islamophobia and her self-appointed role as a guardian of ideological purity, has become a controversial figure among certain members of Mr. Trump’s close circle. In late March, she gained the upper hand. Her posts on X regarding several aides from the National Security Council, whom she criticized for not being sufficiently loyal to Mr. Trump, caught his attention. Subsequently, he invited her to the Oval Office for a phone conversation the following week.
On April 2, Ms. Loomer was seated with a substantial folder on her lap, facing the president at the Resolute Desk. She detailed her discoveries regarding the deputy national security adviser, Alex Wong, whom she noted had participated in Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign, a known critic of Mr. Trump. Additionally, she mentioned that Mr. Wong's wife had clerked for Justice Sonia Sotomayor and had been involved in prosecuting the Jan. 6 defendants. In front of several administration officials, including Michael Waltz, the national security adviser who had intruded into the meeting uninvited, she criticized a dozen other aides.
Following her presentation, Mr. Trump commanded Mr. Waltz, "I want all of them fired." He dismissed the group and embraced Ms. Loomer as she exited. Mr. Wong managed to keep his position for the day, but six individuals listed in Ms. Loomer’s folder were let go.
On April 2, Ms. Loomer was seated with a substantial folder on her lap, facing the president at the Resolute Desk. She detailed her discoveries regarding the deputy national security adviser, Alex Wong, whom she noted had participated in Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign, a known critic of Mr. Trump. Additionally, she mentioned that Mr. Wong's wife had clerked for Justice Sonia Sotomayor and had been involved in prosecuting the Jan. 6 defendants. In front of several administration officials, including Michael Waltz, the national security adviser who had intruded into the meeting uninvited, she criticized a dozen other aides.
Following her presentation, Mr. Trump commanded Mr. Waltz, "I want all of them fired." He dismissed the group and embraced Ms. Loomer as she exited. Mr. Wong managed to keep his position for the day, but six individuals listed in Ms. Loomer’s folder were let go.
"The positive aspect is that alligators are assured a minimum of 65 million meals if we begin immediately," she shared on X.
During one of the numerous interviews with The New York Times for this piece, Ms. Loomer, 32, rejected the idea that she was an outsider without legitimate influence with the president. "My connection to the White House is Donald Trump," she stated. "And that’s quite difficult for many to understand."
Inside the White House, Ms. Loomer is seen as an unpredictable and toxic presence, whose strong loyalty to Mr. Trump is counterbalanced by her propensity to betray almost anyone, including her supporters. No one from Mr. Trump’s close circle in the West Wing is willing to discuss her publicly. The very traits that make her appealing to the president, prompting him to contact her multiple times each month — especially her apparent fearlessness — cause many senior aides to handle her with caution, as if she could detonate a hand grenade.
She has initiated a defamation lawsuit against comedian Bill Maher and HBO due to Mr. Maher’s implication on his show last September that Ms. Loomer had a sexual relationship with Mr. Trump. "Just because a woman can gain access to the president, and she isn’t wealthy or affiliated with the Republican Party, does that mean she must be having an affair with him?" she remarked in another interview. "I hesitate to use the term, as I don’t want to come across as a liberal, but there is indeed a significant amount of misogyny."
Still, Ms. Loomer acknowledges that the president is central to her life. “President Trump comes first,” she says she has told her boyfriend, “and if you can’t handle that, then go find somebody else.” After one meeting with Mr. Trump in 2023, she wrote effusively on X, “I love him so much.”
Mr. Trump, for his part, frequently praises Ms. Loomer, calling her “a fantastic woman, a true patriot” at one rally and “amazing” at another.
She’s got the same intensity Roy Cohn had,” said Stephen K. Bannon, the podcaster who was a senior adviser to the first Trump administration, referring to the pugilistic lawyer who helped Mr. Trump become a player in New York decades ago.
Ms. Loomer has taken great pains to make herself worthy of the part. She styles herself as Mr. Trump’s pre-eminent loyalist, declaring on X last month that “America First is whatever President Trump says it is.” And she’s hyper-conscious of the value Mr. Trump places on appearance. “Every time I go and see the president,” she said, “I always buy a new outfit, because I want to look my best.”
Her growing celebrity was on display one evening last month, when she dined at the Capital Grille, a prominent Washington steakhouse, with a Times reporter and her lawyer, Larry Klayman, who had spent the day helping his client prepare for her deposition in the suit against Mr. Maher. In the crowded dining room, Ms. Loomer traded warm hellos with Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, while James Blair, a White House deputy chief of staff, came to her table to give her a hug.
Over dinner, Ms. Loomer recalled that just 15 years earlier she had been an overweight teenager who “used to cry in the bathroom” because she couldn’t fit in trendy clothes. At times, she said, her weight exceeded 200 pounds; now she weighs about 125. Picking at her scallops, which she ordered despite her fondness for steak, Ms. Loomer added, “I’ve got to stay thin.”
In interviews, Ms. Loomer took exception to what she said was the characterization of her as a “conspiracy theorist and anti-Muslim activist.” Rather, she maintained, she was a person of considerable influence: “On a daily basis, I communicate with the most powerful and wealthiest people in the world.”
Both descriptions, of course, can be true.
Ms. Loomer once posted a video on X saying that the Sept. 11 attacks were “an inside job,” though she now says the post was misinterpreted. She routinely refers to Mr. Trump’s defeat in 2020 — the same year she lost a congressional race in Florida — as “the stolen election.” After losing in a congressional Republican primary two years later, Ms. Loomer refused to accept defeat, explaining on social media that, “YOU DO NOT CONCEDE WHEN THERE IS THEFT INVOLVED!”
Her anti-Islamic rhetoric has been even more prolific. She labeled herself a “#ProudIslamophobe” on Twitter in 2017, a year before the platform banned her for hateful speech toward Representative Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat who is one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress.
As she patrolled the halls of Capitol Hill one recent morning, armed only with a mobile phone, it was easy to spot the look of terror spreading on the faces of Republicans who crossed her path: Nobody wants to be the next lawmaker to be labeled a disloyal RINO, or Republican in Name Only, by Ms. Loomer.
She’s like a child wielding a loaded firearm called Twitter,” said Tucker Carlson, the right-wing media host, whom Ms. Loomer recently attacked on social media for criticizing U.S. military involvement in the war between Israel and Iran. “I don’t blame her. I blame the adults who take her seriously.”
Being feared more than loved appears to suit Ms. Loomer. “I don’t want to be friends with people,” she said. “That’s why I’ve got four dogs.”
She lives with her rescue dogs on Florida’s Gulf Coast in a modest red brick ranch-style rental, splitting the costs with her live-in boyfriend. One bedroom has been converted into a studio for her twice-weekly podcast, “ Loomer Unleashed,” which has 80,000 followers on Rumble. The walls are filled with photographs of herself in combative moments, including when she was ushered out of a House hearing in 2018 for disrupting the testimony of Jack Dorsey, the Twitter chief executive.
That freeze-frame seems apt for a person who remains defiantly outside the mainstream. She is still locked out of her original Facebook and Instagram accounts. She is under the binding terms of a settlement not to speak disparagingly about the Council on American-Islamic Relations and is paying the nonprofit $1,200 a month to reimburse it for legal costs and other fees after a lawsuit she filed was dismissed as meritless. (Ms. Loomer is currently suing her original lawyer in that case for malpractice and will use any proceeds to help pay her debt to CAIR.) She was denied a concealed-carry firearms permit in Florida.
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