Trump Leaps Further Toward the Fringe

Loons everywhere

When Marjorie Taylor Greene thinks you're too extreme, you must be pretty darn extreme. But Laura Loomer isn’t too extreme for Donald Trump, who has been campaigning with her by his side as he runs for president.

Loomer, a 31-year-old provocateur, has claimed that the 9/11 attacks were an "inside job," suggesting that U.S. officials played a role. Shockingly, Trump brought her to the recent national commemoration of 9/11 at Ground Zero in Manhattan, where the attacks caused the collapse of the World Trade Center's twin towers. After the memorial, Loomer stated, "The American people deserve to know the entire truth [about 9/11]. Not just what our lying government chose to tell us."

For some of Trump’s supporters, Loomer's presence at the 9/11 memorial was the last straw. Senator Thom Tillis remarked, “Laura Loomer is a crazy conspiracy theorist who regularly utters disgusting garbage intended to divide Republicans. A DNC [Democratic National Committee] plant couldn’t do a better job than she is doing to hurt President Trump’s chances of winning re-election. Enough.”

Even Representative Greene, no stranger to controversy, condemned a racist comment Loomer made about Trump’s opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, calling it “appalling” and stating it “does not represent who we are as Republicans… This type of behavior should not be tolerated ever.” Senator Lindsey Graham, who typically avoids siding with Greene, joined her and Tillis in a joint statement, describing Loomer’s comments as “bigoted and racist.”

So, who is this woman? Loomer first rose to prominence in 2015 while working for James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas, which conducted undercover “sting” operations to record liberals and academics making controversial statements. In one of her reports, Loomer convinced a college administrator to consider approving a pro-Islamic terrorist group on campus. Since then, she’s been involved with fringe media outlets like InfoWars, the Geller Report, and Rebel News.

In addition to her propaganda work, Loomer has become known for her publicity stunts. For example, she interrupted a Shakespeare in the Park performance in New York, declaring herself to be Hillary Clinton’s longtime aide Huma Abedin and shouting, "This is violence against Donald Trump! Stop the normalization of political violence against the right!" This was in protest of a production of Julius Caesar, in which Trump was portrayed as Caesar. Loomer has also called the national Women’s March “a Nazi organization” and staged a protest on Nancy Pelosi’s lawn, recruiting two homeless men to occupy a tent there. She once chained herself to the doors of a Twitter office to protest the platform’s alleged political bias.

Over the past decade, Loomer has become so prominent in the online world that even academic experts closely follow her. James Cohen, an assistant professor at Queens College, described her as “a savvy online racist” who craves attention. “Her anti-Muslim rhetoric resulted in her being banned from almost all social media,” he noted. “You have to be aggressively hateful to get banned from everything.”

So why has Trump embraced Loomer? It’s simple—she has millions of fans, and these young adults are the voters Trump hopes to win over. This explains why he’s keeping her close, brushing off concerns about her with statements like, “Laura’s a supporter. I have lots of supporters… she’s a strong person; she’s got strong opinions.”

Trump has never been picky about the company he keeps, as long as it comes with fame and a following. While Loomer flies with Trump from event to event, Greene, Tillis, and Graham watch the damage he's doing to a party that’s already teetering on the edge of extremism. To me, this is an act of desperation from a man who began dragging the GOP into the gutter when he announced his candidacy in 2015. So when I hear the complaints, I can’t help but think, “What did you expect?”