Since taking office, President Trump has fought many skirmishes, but one particularly heated one stands out for the president’s willingness to listen to previously marginalized voices and viewpoints. Some of his aides are struggling to keep Laura Loomer in check.
In late March, Ms. Loomer, the right-wing agitator whose self-proclaimed vocation as an intellectual purity enforcer and unapologetic Islamophobia have made her toxic to certain members of Mr. Trump’s closest circle, gained the upper hand. He took notice of her posts on X concerning a number of National Security Council members that she believed lacked enough loyalty to Mr. Trump. Over the phone, he invited her to visit the Oval Office the next week.
On April 2, Ms. Loomer sat at the Resolute Desk facing the president while holding a heavy binder in her lap. She went into further detail about her findings regarding Alex Wong, the deputy national security adviser, who she noted had worked on Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, which was critical of Mr. Trump. Wong’s wife had worked as a clerk for Justice Sonia Sotomayor and had been involved in the prosecution of the defendants on January 6. In front of a number of administration officials, including Michael Waltz, the national security adviser at the time, who had entered the meeting without being invited, she chastised a dozen other aides.
Mr. Trump said, “I want all of them fired,” to Mr. Waltz following her presentation. He threw the group aside and gave Ms. Loomer a hug as she left. Six of the employees in Ms. Loomer’s folder were fired, but Mr. Wong made it through the day.
White House officials achieved a minor triumph two months later. On June 11, Mr. Trump went to the Kennedy Center to see the premiere of Les Misérables. Ms. Loomer followed suit, up the stairs to the V.I.P. area, where the president was waiting for the curtain to rise. However, a White House aide stopped her at the top. Ms. Loomer emphasized that she was granted authorization to enter Mr. Trump’s section. The assistant refused to back down. An staffer of the Kennedy Center arrived on the scene. The worker and the assistant barricaded Ms. Loomer’s route to Mr. Trump for a number of minutes. At last, she went back down the stairs, outraged.
The snub, however, hasn’t stopped her from leveraging her social media fame to advocate for her own position in favor of Mr. Trump’s agenda. She said last week that she was excited about the possibility of people being eaten alive while attempting to flee the swampland immigration detention center known as Alligator Alcatraz, seemingly referring to the whole Hispanic community in the United States.
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