Trump Wants to Hire Anti-Muslim Extremist Laura Loomer For 2024 Run, And She’s Already Battling With His Team
President Donald Trump wants to hire Laura Loomer, a far-right activist who has described herself as a white nationalist and “proud Islamophobe,” to work on his 2024 presidential campaign, according to the New York Times.
Times political reporters Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman reported Friday that Trump told aides he wants to hire Loomer, who has sparked controversy for her history of comments which include cheering on the deaths of refugees, calling Islam a “cancer on society,” and saying it should be illegal for Muslims to serve in the U.S. government. She was banned from Uber for refusing to ride with Muslim drivers.
It isn’t hard to see why Trump — whose successful bid for the U.S. presidency in 2016 included a call to ban all Muslims from the country — would see Loomer as a fellow traveler.
She also shares his penchant for falsely claiming elections are stolen upon losing them.
Loomer ran for U.S. Congress in 2020 and 2022, losing both times despite an endorsement from Trump and national media personalities like Fox News host Pete Hegseth. After her last loss, Loomer took a page out of Trump’s book by loudly claiming the election was rigged, despite a complete lack of evidence in support of that claim.
In the years since, Loomer has picked fights with key figures in the Republican Party, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Christine Pushaw, an aide to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. In a recent tweet, Loomer shared a photoshopped image showing Pushaw with reddened knees and the caption “globlowalism.” She has aligned herself with extremists in the pro-Trump movement, like neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes.
Despite the similarities with Trump, the Times reports that his 2024 team is not on board the Loomer train. “Some of Mr. Trump’s aides are said to have concerns that such a hire will cause a backlash, given her history of inflammatory statements and her embrace of the Republican Party’s fringes,” Swan and Haberman report.
Loomer responded to those concerns in an interview with the Times, firing shots at those concerned members of Trump’s campaign. “The president knows I have always been a Trump loyalist,” she said, “and that I’m committed to helping him win re-election in 2024. He likes me very much. And it’s a shame that he’s surrounded by some people that run to a publication that is notorious for attacking him in order to try to cut me at the knees instead of being loyal to President Trump and respecting their confidentiality agreements.”
On Twitter, the pugilistic personality said she would not be speaking to the media about Trump (for what it’s worth, she did not reply to Mediaite’s requests for comment) and took a shot at the members of his team that dished to the Times.
