Loomered

Laura Loomer, an online right wing troll once driven from Trump’s side, has reemerged with a vengeance.

Photo by Louis Lanzano/UPI

With the global meltdown from Trump’s “Obliteration Day” tariffs, you might have missed this astonishing story: There’s a crazy person calling the shots over staffing at the National Security Council and the NSA. Her name is Laura Loomer, and she’s back just when we thought she was banished forever and it was safe to come out.

Loomer is a MAGA extremist, a self-avowed “Islamophobe,” a 9/11 conspiracy theorist, a Nazi adjacent troll and a confirmed nutcase. She makes Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Q-GA) look harmless by comparison, and that’s saying a lot.

In the final days of the Trump campaign, advisors managed to banish Loomer from his side. But now she’s back, and she reportedly spent 30 minutes in a meeting with Donald Trump. And that was enough, apparently, to get multiple high level people fired.

So here’s the story of what went down in the White House, along with some thoughts on where this leaves things.

Waltzing in to power

According to reporting by Axios and The New York Times, Loomer managed to get herself an appointment with the President. Here’s how the Times reported on the meeting:

President Trump fired six National Security Council officials after an extraordinary meeting in the Oval Office with the far-right activist Laura Loomer, who laid out a list of people she believed were disloyal to the president, U.S. officials said on Thursday.

The firings were described by one of the U.S. officials, who had direct knowledge of the matter. The decision came after Ms. Loomer vilified the staff members by name during a meeting on Wednesday, when she walked into the White House with a sheaf of papers attacking the character and loyalty of numerous N.S.C. officials. Michael Waltz, the national security adviser, joined later in the meeting and briefly defended some of his staff, though it was clear he had little if any power to protect their jobs.

In short, Loomer came in like an Elon Musk wrecking ball and overruled Mike Waltz to demand—and achieve—the firings of some of Waltz’s own top aides. Loomer, not Waltz, was in charge of the NSA. Our head of national security couldn’t prevent his own agency from being gutted by her. Among the ones to go were the senior directors for intelligence, international organizations and legislative affairs.

Hegseth, Shegseth

That wasn’t the end of it. The Times later reported that the very head of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command, General Timothy D. Haugh, was also removed from his job on Thursday, citing reports from Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Here’s the Times highlighting the gag of it of all:

[A] U.S. official briefed on the matter said Laura Loomer, a far-right activist and outside adviser to President Trump, called for General Haugh’s removal during her Oval Office meeting on Thursday. Mr. Trump ordered Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to fire General Haugh, the official said.

Loomer later crowed about the firing and took credit for it on a post on Twitter, saying,

As a Biden appointee, General Haugh had no place serving in the Trump admin given the fact that he was HAND PICKED by General Milley, who was accused of committing treason by President Trump. Why would we want an NSA Director who was referred to Biden after being hand selected by Milley, who told China he would side with them over Trump!?!?

The vetters should have been more critical given the fact that the Pentagon revoked the security detail and clearance for retired general Mark Milley, who called President Trump a FASCIST.

Why would we want Milley’s hand picked choice for NSA DIRECTOR?

We do not! And he was referred for firing.

As Democratic strategist Tom Bonier observed, the idea that Loomer has the power to get a four-star general sacked is head-spinning.

So, to summarize this catastrophic series of events: National Security Adviser Mike Waltz couldn’t prevent the firings of three of his most senior aides at the NSC, and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was ordered by Trump to sack the head of the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command… all because an unhinged MAGA online influencer demanded Trump do so.

Trump later claimed there was no connection between Loomer’s visit and the firings, but come on. When asked about Loomer specifically, Trump defended her as a “great patriot” adding, “She makes recommendations of things and people, and sometimes I listen to those recommendations.”

A quick Loomer primer

Whenever someone exhibits unexpected authority and power over policy and personnel, it’s important to understand who that person is and what agenda he or she may have. In the case of Loomer, it’s a bit like lifting a rock and seeing a bunch of squirming things below, so apologies in advance.

Tom Nichols of The Atlantic described Loomer succinctly, with receipts:

If you don’t spend a lot of time online, you probably don’t know who Loomer is, and that’s healthy. To say that she is a “conspiracy theorist” is not quite enough: She has referred to herself as a “proud Islamophobe” and has claimed that 9/11 was an “inside job”; she has charged that some school shootings were staged, accused Florida First Lady Casey DeSantis of “exaggerating” her struggle with breast cancer, and questioned whether the “deep state” might have used an atmospheric-research facility in Alaska to create a snowstorm over Des Moines. (Why? So that foul weather would suppress the turnout in the 2024 Iowa GOP caucuses and hurt Trump’s campaign.)

On top of this, Loomer regularly amplifies Nazi and Russian propaganda, including being largely responsible for juicing the false “Haitians in Springfield are eating pets” conspiracy. Many speculate, probably correctly, that her presence on Trump’s plane just prior to the debate with Vice President Kamala Harris gave her an opportunity to plant the seed of the conspiracy more deeply into Trump’s foggy brain, which then came out of his mouth during the live debate to a national audience.

Some of her biggest detractors on the far right, such as professional provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, even claim Loomer has been involuntarily committed twice for psychotic episodes, which is why she can’t own a gun. (I don’t have independent verification of this, but Loomer has not sued Yiannopoulos over these assertions, about which he says he has documentation to back up “locked in his safe.”)

Peter Schorsch, a former Republican operative, gave perhaps the most succinct description of Loomer: “Laura Loomer is a political science experiment gone wrong,” he wrote. “She’s what happens when you take a gadfly and inject it with that radioactive waste from Godzilla.”

All this is to say, Loomer is not the kind of person we ever want hanging around the White House and having Trump’s miraculously cured ear.

And yet, here we are.

The Loomertics are in charge of the asylum

The far right has long been at war with the “establishment” GOP, and Loomer has been at the center of much of the carnage. She has made it her mission to “expose” supposed disloyal Republicans as anti-Trump neocons and ruin their lives. Think of her as a kind of “Libs of TikTok” but for the Trump administration.

The officials targeted by Loomer this time had already been through a vetting process by the administration. That means pretty much anyone remains fair game if they in any way displease or raise Loomer’s suspicions.

Such a circumstance will inevitably breed mistrust and suspicion, especially as others seek to manipulate Loomer into turning her attention to their political opponents. As The Nation’s Jeet Heer dryly observed, “I’m sorry, but an administration where people get fired because Laura Loomer doesn’t like them is not going to be a stable government.”

Many warned before the election that Trump 2.0 would have none of the guardrails that were still in place during his first term. People like former Chief of Staff John Kelly or Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who were strong mitigating voices, are nowhere to be seen in this new White House.

Instead, whoever is there is either okay letting the horse into the hospital or is too scared to speak out, lest they get kicked in the shins, too. The result is a palace drama where Rasputin-like figures will hold inordinate sway over an increasingly mad and unstable czar.

The only good that comes out of any of this is the knowledge that fear is the predominant driving factor inside the White House, leading to paralysis and a kind of karmic punishment for those who have sought to gain personally from allegiance to Trump and the GOP.

Distressingly, the rest of the country, along with the entire world, will still have to suffer the terrible consequences as the Laura Loomers (and Steve Bannons, Stephen Millers and Kash Patels) consolidate the true power behind the gold MAGA throne.