Far-right activist Laura Loomer has become such a close confidant of President Donald Trump and has become so influential over his hirings and firings that White House insiders are covertly recruiting her to go after each other and ruin their rivals’ chances of promotions, The Free Press reported on Thursday.
In recent months, Loomer, an avowed conspiracy theorist and 9/11 truther who describes herself as a “proud Islamophobe” and a white nationalist sympathizer, has personally been responsible, through her social media rants, for some of Trump’s nominees being ousted or withdrawn, with a key example being a surgeon general pick she proclaimed had fabricated medical credentials and was too pro-COVID vaccine.
The latest case appears to be Dr. Vinay Prasad, who in May was named director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, an FDA office responsible for regulating gene therapy and vaccines. Per Gabe Kaminsky, Loomer “said in an article on her website that he was a ‘lifelong progressive liberal,’ citing Prasad’s support in 2020 for Bernie Sanders, abortion, and gay marriage. And she brought attention to a portion of a 2021 podcast episode in which she claimed that Prasad said he stabbed a Trump voodoo doll to curse him. (Prasad was making a joke about who to blame for the pandemic.)”
Shortly after this, Prasad left the administration, with a Health and Human Services spokesperson saying he didn’t want to be a “distraction.”
But it goes deeper than Loomer sabotaging careers from the outside, said the report: she’s actually being weaponized by certain Trump administration officials to go after others.
“People here are terrified of her. Every time she gets brought up, you can feel the air in the room drop by like 15 degrees. A lot of people are worried about being ‘Loomered,’” said one White House official. Another said, “She talks to the president about stuff, and she knows how to characterize things and successfully move the needle on issues. I think she is f—— crazy, but she is also influential.”
Yet another “claimed it’s not uncommon for current officials to contact Loomer for her to go after their rivals in the government,” creating an “annoyance” for everyone.
All of this comes even though some Trump allies in Congress raise alarms about Loomer having so much influence; as far back as 2023, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) was adamant the president shouldn’t hire Loomer for his campaign.