A look at Laura Loomer, longtime Trump ally criticized for racist posts and Sept. 11 conspiracies

Lau­ra Loomer, a right-wing per­son­al­i­ty known for her incen­di­ary social media pres­ence, appeared to have been side­lined at points by Don­ald Trump’s cam­paign and then by his admin­is­tra­tion.

But she has long had the president’s ear and may have it again, at least for now.

In an Oval Office meet­ing on Wednes­day, the con­ser­v­a­tive activist urged Trump to fire Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil offi­cials, as the team strug­gles to answer ques­tions not only on why they were using Sig­nal, a pub­licly avail­able encrypt­ed app, to dis­cuss a mil­i­tary oper­a­tion in Yemen, but how a jour­nal­ist was mis­tak­en­ly added to the group chat. Trump fol­lowed suit, peo­ple famil­iar with the mat­ter told The Asso­ci­at­ed Press.

It was the lat­est sign of Loomer’s influ­ence, even as she has faced crit­i­cism for enter­tain­ing 9/11 con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and her his­to­ry of anti-immi­grant and anti-Mus­lim posts. Loomer, who is pro­lif­ic on social media, has been tear­ing into some of Trump’s allies and advis­ers, call­ing out what she calls a “vet­ting cri­sis” with­in the White House and imply­ing mem­bers of his team are try­ing to sub­vert his agen­da.

Trump has long praised Loomer while dis­tanc­ing him­self at times from her most con­tro­ver­sial com­ments.

Here’s what to know about Loomer and what both she and Trump said about the lat­est inci­dent.

How did she get close to Trump?

Loomer, 31, has been involved in pol­i­tics as an advo­cate of Trump. She twice unsuc­cess­ful­ly ran for Con­gress in 2020 and 2022 in South Flori­da and had been known for stag­ing protests includ­ing hand­cuff­ing her­self to a Twit­ter office after the ser­vice banned her and jump­ing a fence at a home owned by House Speak­er Nan­cy Pelosi. She says she was invit­ed to Mar-a-Lago after lead­ing attacks against Flori­da Gov. Ron DeSan­tis, who was prepar­ing to chal­lenge Trump in the 2024 GOP pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry.

Last year, Loomer accom­pa­nied Trump on his 9/11 trav­els in New York and Penn­syl­va­nia and was also seen walk­ing out of the plane the pre­vi­ous day after Trump land­ed in Philadel­phia to debate his elec­toral oppo­nent, then-Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris. Loomer said she was invit­ed those days as a guest.

Loomer said she nev­er offi­cial­ly joined the cam­paign after Trump’s allies pre­ferred he would keep his dis­tance.

What makes her an influ­en­tial fig­ure?
Loomer has been banned from numer­ous social media plat­forms, includ­ing Face­book. She post­ed dur­ing last year’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign that if Har­ris beat Trump, “the White House will smell like cur­ry & White House speech­es will be facil­i­tat­ed via a call cen­ter.” Har­ris was the first Black woman and per­son of South Asian descent to serve as vice pres­i­dent.

In Decem­ber she pub­licly sparred with bil­lion­aire advis­er Elon Musk, a native of South Africa, over their oppos­ing posi­tions on the use of skilled migra­tion visas.

The con­ser­v­a­tive activist says such visas go against the “Amer­i­ca First” agen­da. Her account on X, a social media plat­form owned by Musk, was tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend­ed, and for some time fol­low­ing the feud, she said she lost access to oth­er paid fea­tures.

Ear­li­er this month, Trump end­ed Secret Ser­vice pro­tec­tion details assigned to Demo­c­rat Joe Biden’s adult chil­dren fol­low­ing a report from Loomer with pho­tos show­ing Hunter Biden’s pro­tec­tive detail while in South Africa.

What is she known for?
Loomer has a pod­cast called “Loomer Unleashed” on Rum­ble, a plat­form known for stream­ing far-right fig­ures. Her last name has been coined as a verb that peo­ple on both sides of the polit­i­cal aisle use for when politi­cians, offi­cials, or oth­er fig­ures are pub­licly shamed.

The influ­encer fre­quent­ly makes anti-Islam and anti-immi­grant posts on social media and made vile racist and sex­ist attacks against Har­ris. She once shared a video on X that said “9/11 was an Inside Job!”

The con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry that U.S. offi­cials are hid­ing infor­ma­tion about the Sept. 11 attacks or were some­how involved in the plan­ning has tak­en hold among a seg­ment of deter­mined “truthers,” but many of their most preva­lent claims have fall­en apart upon fur­ther scruti­ny.

What hap­pened with Loomer this week?
Peo­ple speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss per­son­nel mat­ters say Loomer met with Trump, Vice Pres­i­dent JD Vance, chief of staff Susie Wiles, nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er Mike Waltz and Ser­gio Gor, direc­tor of the Pres­i­den­tial Per­son­nel Office and pre­sent­ed “research find­ings.”

When reached for com­ment, Loomer referred The Asso­ci­at­ed Press to an X post shared ear­li­er on Thurs­day, say­ing she was not going to divulge any details about her Oval Office meet­ing with Trump “out of respect” for the pres­i­dent.

“I will con­tin­ue work­ing hard to sup­port his agen­da, and I will con­tin­ue reit­er­at­ing the impor­tance of, and the neces­si­ty of STRONG VETTING, for the sake of pro­tect­ing the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, and our nation­al secu­ri­ty,” Loomer said.

In a post lat­er Thurs­day on X, Loomer appeared to take cred­it for the fir­ings, writ­ing, “You know how you know the NSC offi­cials I report­ed to Pres­i­dent Trump are dis­loy­al peo­ple who have played a role in sab­o­tag­ing Don­ald Trump?” She then not­ed that “the fired offi­cials” were being defend­ed by Trump crit­ics on CNN and MSNBC.

Loomer has been crit­i­cal of Waltz and his own vet­ting process. In the lead up to the meet­ing, she com­plained to sym­pa­thet­ic admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials that he relied too much on “neo­cons,” or neo­con­ser­v­a­tives with­in the GOP and “not-MAGA-enough” types.

Loomer has attacked prin­ci­pal deputy nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er Alex Wong, who was Waltz’ aide tak­ing the lead in assem­bling the team based on the con­ver­sa­tion shared by jour­nal­ist Jef­frey Gold­berg.

What has Trump said about her?
Dur­ing last year’s elec­tion after her racist posts about Har­ris, Trump said, “Laura’s been a sup­port­er of mine” and that she had “strong opin­ions,” but denied knowl­edge of her com­ments. He would lat­er post on his Truth Social account that he dis­agreed with her com­ments.

Trump denied on Thurs­day that Loomer had any­thing to do with aides being oust­ed from their jobs at the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil, call­ing her a “very good patri­ot and a very strong per­son.”

Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One as he made his way to Mia­mi that she only made rec­om­men­da­tions.

“Some­times I lis­ten to those rec­om­men­da­tions, like I do with every­body,” Trump said, adding: “She’s usu­al­ly very con­struc­tive. She rec­om­mend­ed cer­tain peo­ple for jobs.”

Gomez Licon report­ed from Fort Laud­erdale, Flori­da. Asso­ci­at­ed Press writer Dar­lene Superville in Wash­ing­ton con­tributed to this report.

ARTICLE ORIGINALLY POSTED ON AP: