Social media firebrand Laura Loomer returns to Trump’s side

Loomer, LauraTrump, Donald JPresidential Election of 2024Social MediaUnited States Politics and GovernmentConservatism (US Politics)Right-Wing Extremism and Alt-RightRepublican Party

The former president’s decision to elevate Loomer, a far-right activist known for her racist and homophobic online posts, has stunned even some allies.

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Before traveling to Philadelphia for this week’s debate, Donald Trump invited one of the most polarizing figures on the internet.

Laura Loomer was with Trump’s entourage as he faced off against Vice President Kamala Harris. And, after the debate, she was in the press room with the former president. And the next day, she flew with him to New York and Shanksville, Pennsylvania, to commemorate the anniversary of 9/11.

Loomer, a far-right activist known for her endless stream of sexist, homophobic, transphobic, anti-Muslim and occasionally anti-Semitic posts on social media, has gained notoriety over the past decade for unabashedly claiming that 9/11 was “an inside job,” calling Islam “a cancer,” accusing Ron DeSantis’ wife of exaggerating her breast cancer and claiming that President Joe Biden was behind the attempted assassination of Trump in July.

Just two days before the debate, Loomer, 31, posted a racist joke about the vice president, whose mother was Indian-American. Loomer wrote on the social media platform X that if Harris won the election, the White House would “smell like curry.”

For many observers, including some of Trump’s most prominent allies, the Republican presidential nominee’s choice at a critical moment in his campaign to give a platform to a social media firebrand, albeit one with nearly 1.3 million followers on X, was surprising.

“This person’s record is really toxic,” South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally, told a HuffPost reporter on Thursday. “I don’t think it’s helpful at all.”

Her comments were echoed by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican and a staunch Trump supporter. “I don’t think she has the right experience or the right mindset to advise on a very important presidential election,” Greene told reporters Thursday morning.

Loomer declined to comment, saying in a text message that she was not “interested in talking to the media so they can promote their conspiracies about me.” But she used X, her favored medium, to attack both Greene and Graham, calling them disloyal to Trump while making a series of accusations about their personal lives.

The criticism hasn’t dampened the candidate’s enthusiasm for her. On Thursday afternoon, Trump shared a post of hers on Truth Social in which she attempted to debunk an Axios story that claimed Harris was outperforming the former president on social media.

Asked to comment on her association with the former president, the Trump campaign responded with a statement it had released Wednesday about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that did not address questions about Loomer’s ties to Trump. “That day was about no one but the souls who are no longer with us, their families, and the heroes who bravely stepped forward to save their fellow Americans on that fateful day,” the campaign statement said.

This is not the first time Trump has been in contact with her.

Loomer lives in Florida and frequently attends events at Mar-a-Lago, and the former president has amplified many of her social media posts on his own accounts. In January, she flew with him to Iowa during preparations for the state’s caucuses. In April, The New York Times reported that Trump was considering hiring her for his campaign — a plan he abandoned only after some of his supporters balked at the idea.

But with seven weeks to go until the presidential contest, a time when conventional wisdom dictates that candidates broaden their message to appeal to moderate swing voters, Trump’s closeness to Loomer is a clear sign that he is redoubling his efforts to support some of the most caustic elements of the far right.

Another sign came Tuesday, when the Trump campaign assembled a “social media war room” in Philadelphia to respond in real time to the debate. About 18 conservative power brokers gathered in a conference room at the Warwick Rittenhouse Square — the same hotel where Harris was staying — and fired off rebuttals to each of Harris’s statements during the debate, while vigorously defending Trump.

The group included Chaya Raichik, who is behind the conservative social media account Libs of TikTok and is known for its transphobic content and smear campaigns against schools, hospitals and libraries. There was also Jack Posobiec, a right-wing podcaster who helped spread the Pizzagate conspiracy theory that Democratic politicians were secretly running a child sex trafficking ring out of a Washington pizzeria. There was also Rogan O’Handley, who is better known as DC Draino, an election denier and vaccine skeptic.

Before the event, Trump sent each person a signed letter thanking them “for being a social media warrior in the fight to save our country,” adding that he looked forward to “creating viral content with you at the White House in a few months.”

The group, according to Alex Bruesewitz, a political consultant hired by the campaign last month, collectively had about 50 million followers on social media. Several of them, like Posobiec and O’Handley, have been hired by the Republican National Committee to host webinars on election integrity in recent weeks.

Shortly before the debate began, Bruesewitz received a video call from Trump, who offered the group some encouraging words.

“You guys are more important than me, actually, because you get the word out the way you want to,” Trump was recorded saying in a video of the call later posted on social media.

It’s hard to gauge the impact these voices might have on Trump, and little to nothing is known about his campaign conversations with Loomer or other influencers. But few, if any, candidates have had a closer relationship with their online base of support, which doesn’t always focus on the same issues as the broader electorate.

In the days leading up to the debate, Loomer and much of Trump’s social media war room posted allegations that Haitian immigrants had been killing and eating domestic animals in Springfield, Ohio.

Most shared AI-generated images of dogs, cats and ducks being protected by Trump, along with other content underscoring the baseless claim that the pets were being eaten. On Monday, for example, O’Handley posted an image of Trump astride a giant cat while holding an AR-15-style rifle.

Loomer, meanwhile, posted ads for dog collars with the phrase “not your lunch #MAGA” that could be purchased for $23.28 plus shipping. Another version had the phrase “don’t eat me” in Haitian Creole.

Trump’s last two posts on Truth Social before the debate were AI images of cats and ducks; one featured cats in military fatigues carrying assault rifles and wearing MAGA hats; the other showed the candidate himself sitting on a plane amid a crowd of ducks and cats.

Twenty-six minutes into the debate, Trump responded to a question about immigration by claiming that immigrants were “eating the pets of people who live” in Springfield.

For many of the 67 million debate viewers, who are not as connected to the internet as the former president or his social media followers, the comment may have been confusing. But for some of those hoping to see him defeated at the polls in November, the whole episode provoked some glee.

On Thursday, Claire McCaskill, the former Democratic senator from Missouri, took to social media to sarcastically encourage Trump to spend more time with Loomer, calling her a “perfect adviser.”

“I hope he keeps her very close to him between now and the election,” she wrote. “They are made for each other.”

Ken Bensinger covers right-wing media and American political campaigns for The Times. More from Ken Bensinger