President Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump knocked on doors in Florida on Tuesday for Laura Loomer, the bigoted conspiracy theorist and notorious internet troll vying for a seat in Congress.
Before she won the Republican primary in Florida’s deeply-blue 21st District, Loomer was most famous for chaining herself to Twitter’s front door while wearing a yellow Star of David, spreading conspiracy theories about the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting, being permanently banned from Uber Eats for calling for an Uber without a Muslim driver, and bragging about being a #ProudIslamophobe.
None of that has discouraged Trump campaign surrogate Lara Trump from hopping aboard the Loomer train.
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Lara Trump, wife to Eric Trump and a Trump 2020 campaign surrogate, was photographed with Loomer and several volunteers “knocking doors, making calls, and training new volunteers—all to spread the President’s record of success with their fellow Floridians,” according to a Tuesday tweet by Trump campaign deputy national press secretary Courtney Parella.
It marked the furthest Trumpworld has gone to support Loomer and the first time it has publicly thrown its resources and star power behind Loomer’s outsider campaign—after President Trump congratulated her on Twitter for her primary win last month.
(After Loomer raised a massive $1.1 million for her primary campaign, the Trump campaign also used her list of campaign donors for their own fundraiser, according to Mediaite.)
Beyond her many instances of Islamophobia, Loomer has also praised and appeared with Canadian white nationalist and Holocaust denier Faith Goldy and made racist comments about Latinos. She has been banned from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Uber, Uber Eats, and Lyft.
Nevertheless, the Florida GOP and the Trump campaign have embraced her congressional bid. Loomer’s campaign director, Karen Giorno, ran Trump’s 2016 Florida operations. And her campaign was backed by a grab bag of Trumpy nutbags like conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, convicted criminal Roger Stone, and washed up internet troll Milo Yiannopoulos.
She has tried to capitalize on media reporting of her bigoted remarks, sending out a fundraising email this week that said, “The liberal media is ON FIRE with hate over Laura Loomer and is deploying typical Alinsky tactics in their desperation to defeat her.”
Loomer faces an uphill battle in Florida’s 21st District, where the incumbent, Democrat Lois Frankel, holds a healthy margin.
—with additional reporting by Will Sommer
