Who is Laura Loomer, the controversial figure seen cozying up to Trump’s team? – National

Laura Loomer, a right-wing activist who posted last year that 9/11 was an “inside job,” has attracted a tremendous amount of attention in the past week after she’s been spotted cozying up to Donald Trump’s campaign team and appearing by the Republican presidential nominee’s side at various events.

Last week, she shared videos of attending a 9/11 memorial event with the former president, where they met with firefighters and family members of the victims of the terrorist attack in New York City. She was also spotted disembarking Trump’s plane when he landed in Philadelphia for last week’s debate against Vice-President Kamala Harris.

And while there are no clear answers at this point on how Loomer, 31, came to be part of Trump’s tight entourage, or if she’s actively involved in his presidential campaign, her association with Trump is causing concern in Republican circles – not to mention being downright denounced by Democrats.

Loomer, herself, added fuel to the fire last week with a racist post about Harris, writing that the “White House will smell like curry & White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center,” if Harris, who is half Indian, wins the election.

“She has to go. Laura Loomer cannot stay. She just can’t. She is unapologetic,” one anonymous Trump ally told NBC News, adding: “This woman attacked the vice president of the United States in such a racist manner. It was appalling and she hasn’t apologized.”

Here’s what we know about Laura Loomer, from her rise as a right-wing influencer and her problematic past comments, to how Republicans are responding to her increasingly close connection to Trump.

Loomer’s rise to far-right fame

Loomer first began a career of courting controversy more than a decade ago when, as a student at Barry University in Florida, she made an undercover video that she secretly filmed, where she approached school officials to discuss her proposal to create a club for students who support the Islamic State, or ISIS. While the sting video got her suspended, it captured the interest of conservative group Project Veritas, and she ended up working with the organization.

As she gained her footing as a conservative social media influencer, blogging and writing articles, she also pulled a number of stunts that propelled her further into the public eye.

According to the New York Times, in 2017 Loomer interrupted a performance of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in Central Park in New York, upset that the main character was made up to look like Trump.

She jumped onto the stage just after the scene where Caesar dies, yelling “This is violence against Donald Trump! Stop the normalization of political violence against the right!”

She continued to rack up a laundry list of problematic comments over the years, using social media as a platform to reach her growing following.

According to a fact sheet complied by Georgetown University’s Bridge initiative, she left Project Verita to join far-right Canadian media organization Rebel News in 2017, where she shared more of her Islamophobic views.

After the New York City truck bombing in November 2017 that killed eight and wounded dozens, Loomer posted a series of anti-Muslim tweets and described herself as a “proud Islamophobe.” She also described Muslims as “savages” who “ruin everything,” and asked a Muslim journalist wearing hijab to “disavow” the attack.

She also called Islam a “cancer” and said that “we should never let another Muslim into the civilized world.”

Although her media credentials were revoked in 2018, after she “harassed” the family of the Pulse nightclub shooter outside an Orlando courtroom “with questions about Muslims, jihad and Easter,” that didn’t stop Loomer.

From Nov. 2018 to April of the following year, she set her sights on targeting Somali American Muslim U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar, both on social media and in person. Her intense harassment of Omar lead to her being banned from Twitter. (Elon Musk, when he bought the platform, reinstated her account.)

She continued her attack on Omar on other social media channels, however, which resulted in Loomer also being permanently banned from Facebook and Instagram.

She was also banned from both Uber and Lyft after tweeting: “Someone needs to create a non-Islamic version of Uber or Lyft because I never want to support another Islamic immigrant driver.” Both companies said Loomer broke their community guidelines regarding discrimination on the basis of religion.

Failed attempts at politics

In 2020, Loomer decided to wade into politics, throwing her hat into the ring in the GOP primary in the race for Florida’s 21st Congressional District.

Despite raising US$2 million in campaign funding, winning the Republican primary and attracting a note of congratulations from Trump — “Great going Laura,” he wrote. “You have a great chance against a Pelosi puppet!” — she lost the general election.

A second foray into Congress also proved unsuccessful, when she challenged Representative Daniel Webster, a Florida Republican, in a primary in 2022 but lost.

What Republicans are saying about Loomer

After Trump appeared alongside Loomer last week, he was called out by a several Republicans.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican firebrand also known to peddle conspiracy theories, called Loomer’s post about Harris and curry “appalling and extremely racist” and said it “does not represent who we are as Republicans or MAGA.”

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Loomer hit back at Greene, saying she was “jealous” that she got to travel with Trump.

Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina, told a reporter from HuffPost last week that Ms. Loomer “is just really toxic,” and Thom Tillis, a Republican senator from North Carolina, called Loomer “a crazy conspiracy theorist who regularly utters disgusting garbage intended to divide Republicans.”

Even Gov. JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, took a swipe at Loomer on Sunday, telling NBC’s Meet the Press “I don’t like those comments,” about last week’s post about Harris.

“What Laura said about Kamala Harris is not what we should be focused on. We should be focused on the policy and on the issues,” Vance continued.

What Trump has to say

In his usual style, Trump deflected questions about Loomer last Friday and claimed he “(doesn’t) know that much” about her penchant for spewing conspiracy theories.

“I know she’s a big fan of the campaign, but I really don’t know,” he told NBC.

Later that day, however, he attempted to explain his relationship with her, posting to his social network, Truth Social, that Loomer “doesn’t work for the Campaign. She’s a private citizen and longtime supporter. 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.”

This summer, when Trump spotted Loomer in the crowd at a cryptocurrency conference, he sang her praises: “She’s a fantastic person, great woman,” he told the crowd.

What Loomer has said about the controversies

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

She also told the outlet she is not “anti-Muslim.”

She also said in a text message to The Associated Press that she doesn’t work for the Trump campaign and that she was “invited as a guest” to last week’s outings. She did not respond to questions about her past statements about 9/11.

In an earlier post, Loomer said that she does not work for Trump and won’t be speaking to “reporters who are calling me and obsessively asking me to talk to them.”

“I am simply a loyal advocate,” she wrote. “Human beings are allowed to have friends.”