Former president Donald Trump moved to hire his racist firebrand pal Laura Loomer—a far-right, Islamophobic 9/11 conspiracist who earlier this month was paid to say she eats dog food—but one of his top advisers swooped in and blocked the hire, according to a report in Axios.
The news site said Trump held an interview with Loomer last year, but his campaign co-manager Susie Wiles made a point of sitting in so that she could nix the hiring.
The news comes as several senior figures in the Republican Party who are normally sympathetic to Trump, including Senator Lindsey Graham and Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene, have excoriated the former president for palling around with Loomer this week, including by bringing the 9/11 truther to September 11 memorials in New York City and Pennsylvania.
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“It’s an insult to those who have to fight for their lives now, who are sick and dying,” said John Feal, an emergency responder who was at the scene of the attack in 2001, in an interview with CNN. He noted the thousands of responders and others who were exposed to potentially toxic substances that day and have subsequently been diagnosed with cancer.
As she has traversed the country with Trump, Loomer has insisted she doesn’t work for him and was invited as a guest.
A twice-failed congressional candidate and online commentator, Loomer has repeatedly spread demented conspiracy theories but that hasn’t been enough to keep her out of Trump’s orbit.
Axios reported that staff have tried to weed out the former president’s craziest pals from his entourage—avoiding things like his 2022 dinner with antisemites Nick Fuentes and Kanye West—but Loomer has continued to earn Trump’s praise and affection.
In addition to being a semi-regular fixture at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Loomer said she spent the day with Trump last year in his private box at the LIV Golf tournament in Bedminster, New Jersey. In a video Loomer posted to X that day, Trump can be heard telling her that she is “very special.” Trump also heaped praise on Loomer in April of this year, pointing her out in a crowd at Mar-a-Lago to note she is a “woman with courage.”
“You work hard, and you are a very opinionated lady,” Trump added, in the Bedminster video, with a grateful Loomer looking on. “I have to tell you that, and in my opinion, I like that.”
Some of Loomer’s past “opinions” have included suggesting that the 2018 mass shootings in Parkland, Florida and Santa Fe, Texas were staged, or that the 2017 Las Vegas shooter was affiliated with ISIS, and that the attempted 2018 U.S. mail bombings, which targeted progressive figures including President Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama, were a false flag operation.
Last year, she promoted a video spreading the conspiracy theory that 9/11 was an “inside job”—“I’ve never denied the fact that Islamic terrorists carried out the 9/11 terrorist attacks,” she told CNN Thursday.
Muslims and immigrants have been a central target of Loomer’s ire—she’s invoked the white nationalist great replacement theory and said she supports a “white ethnostate.” Early on in her career, she wasted considerable energy on unfunny right-wing pranks, including when she tried putting a burka on New York City’s famous Fearless Girl statue and merely annoyed a bunch of well-meaning tourists.
In July, she claimed President Joe Biden was “dying and final preparations are being made for him.” According to the President’s schedule Friday, he was alive and preparing to host a bilateral meeting with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
