Conservative gadfly Laura Loomer’s outsized influence over Donald Trump is raising alarms among MAGA supporters who helped her “influencer’' career along, and dismay within the president’s inner circle which has had to establish an emergency alert protocol designed to keep Trump out of her reach.
According to a report from The New Republic’s Nina Burleigh, Loomer, a failed congressional candidate known for spreading conspiracy theories and overt racist attacks on Muslims, has a growing number critics on the far-right as she uses her growing sway with Trump to undercut her conservative rivals with the same viciousness she has used on liberals.
“In her power and profanity, in her smashing of walls between ‘influencer’ and ‘journalist’ and ‘presidential adviser,’ Loomer is a mile-marker in the descent of the American political discourse into depravity, and of our government into chaos and farce,” wrote Burleigh.
She added that Loomer has boasted of the many “scalps” — as she calls them — she has acquired among Trump administration officials who have been subsequently fired.
Looking back at the havoc Loomer has created, right-wing Christian producer Lauren Witzke, who helped create the “Loomer Unleashed” podcast, now laments, “Trump needed a pit bull, and we went all in to create his pit bull.… And we created a monster.”
One MAGA Republican, who asked not to be named over fears Loomer would target them, complained she is, “trying to eliminate competition in the dirtiest backhanded disgusting tactics.”
White House insiders told Burleigh that Loomer has become such an annoyance that the president’s comms team created an alert if she gets too near to him or starts up another ruckus that might require a response.
Case in point, a recent alert that hit the comms team's cells that simply read: “LLP. Activate.”
“Everyone with an earpiece in the vicinity understood the acronym. Laura Loomer Protocol. According to my source, this is an actual strategy understood by White House advance teams," Burleigh wrote.
"When a sighting is shared, the teams know to keep eyes on her and, in the patois, 'initiate containment.'"
In one instance, the reported went on, Loomer was removed and ushered to “an outer perimeter. As she was being gently guided away, she was talking the whole time, strenuously objecting. ‘I’m supposed to be here! I have to let the president know what press to talk to! The president wants to see me, and in the presidential box.’”
According to another Trump insider, “She finds a way to get herself on the campus wherever he is, and then uses her cunning and ability to speak her way past people, to get them to get her closer to him, until he sees her. Once he recognizes her, there is a 50-50 chance he will say, ‘Hey Laura, come on over here!’”
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