The rightwing influencer continues to brag about her influence over the White House.
A top congressional Democrat blames rightwing influencer Laura Loomer for the cancellation of a recently scheduled meeting between himself and top intelligence officials. On Tuesday, Senator Mark Warner (D-Virginia), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that a “routine” meeting between himself and officials at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency was derailed following Loomer’s social media posts about him, a sign of her ongoing influence with the Trump administration.
“Over the weekend, conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer discovered the unpublicized, classified visit and launched a campaign of baseless attacks against both me and NGA Director Vice Admiral Trey Whitworth for hosting what has always been considered a routine oversight meeting,” Warner wrote on his website. According to the Senator, “political appointees canceled the visit” following Loomer’s criticism and lamented that this is “just the latest example of an administration seemingly desperate to please Loomer, a figure with a long history of extreme and outlandish fringe views, including 9/11 denialism, anti-Muslim harassment campaigns, and associations with white supremacists.”
Warner added: “This nakedly political decision undermines the dedicated, nonpartisan staff at NGA and threatens the principle of civilian oversight that protects our national security.”
The government seems to have a different interpretation of events than Warner. When reached for comment by Gizmodo, a Defense official relayed the following: “The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency visit was rescheduled, not canceled, in order to accommodate bipartisan participation in the town hall event.”
Most of Loomer’s posts about Warner and Whitworth appear to have been posted on Aug. 31st. In one post, Loomer tagged Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and quipped: “How do you feel about this Leftist Senator talking shit about you while being welcomed inside NGA for a ‘fireside chat’? I’m told NGA is infested with Trump haters because Whitworth was a Biden appointee and all of his people are still there.”
After Warner issued his statement about Loomer this week, the influencer continued to post about the senator, calling him a “liar, and communist FRAUD!” and taunting him with a tweet that merely read “Cry more, bitch.”
Why Loomer—an unhinged conspiracy theorist with no known professional background in politics or media—has such an outsized influence over the Trump administration continues to be a mystery. Sure, Loomer has a relatively high follower count—with 1.7 million X users—but, then again, so does Ben Shapiro (he has nearly 8 million). Unlike Shapiro, however, Loomer has been credited with the career assassinations of many high-ranking government officials. Wherever Loomer’s caps-locked tweets cast their fiery gaze, an unfortunate job termination typically follows after. The unlucky have included the FDA’s top vaccine regulator, a lawyer for the NSA, bumbling “Signalgate” official Mike Waltz, and a doctor for the CIA, among others.
That said, Loomer isn’t always successful with her social media hit jobs. She has repeatedly targeted Trump’s dopey Attorney General, Pam Bondi, over her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files—to no avail.
A couple of weeks ago, The Free Press reported that White House staff had “had it” with Loomer. “Laura is more trouble than she’s worth,” an administration official told the outlet. “She used to pretty much just amplify the MAGA line, but now it’s pretty clear that she has her own agenda.” Meanwhile, another White House official said: “There is widespread understanding here that she’s not guided entirely by loyalties to the president, but external business interests.”
This theory—that Loomer is an ideological mercenary who tweets things she’s paid to tweet—has gained traction in certain conservative circles. It came to prominence not long after the ousting of the FDA’s vaccine regulator, Dr. Vinay Prasad, who was expelled from Trumpland last month following tweets from Loomer accusing him of disloyalty to Trump. The Bulwark previously reported on the conflict between Prasad and a pharmaceutical company that preceded his ouster:
…several figures on the right noted that Loomer’s attacks on Prasad also came amid a high-profile struggle between Prasad and Sarepta, a Massachusetts-based drug manufacturer, over the company’s treatment for Duchenne muscular dystrophy.
Prasad was a longstanding critic of the FDA’s decision to approve Sarepta’s drug, Elevidys. That clash hit a new level last month after three patients—two of whom were taking Elevidys, and one who was taking a related treatment—died of what appeared to be acute liver toxicity. The FDA put Elevidys’s clinical trials on hold.
Then on Monday, shortly before Prasad resigned, the FDA reversed itself and said patients who could walk could still receive the drug, saying one patient’s death had been unrelated.
Due to circumstantial evidence like this, some in MAGA-world see proof of corporate influence in Loomer’s tweets. If this were true, it would not make her particularly unique. The entire influencer industry is based around paid advertisements, albeit that typically applies to products instead of political opinions. That said, pay-to-play endorsements seem like they would be relatively common in the infotainment sphere. Loomer, in turn, has accused fellow MAGA maniac Tucker Carlson of being bankrolled by Qatar, an accusation he has denied.
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