Laura Loomer

I first met Laura Loomer in the New York office of Project Veritas. She was blonde then, feisty, smart and ambitious. She was also fearless. Because of her outspoken views regarding the dangers of radical Islam – views that I largely share – her career as an investigative journalist and advocate was severely hampered. She became possibly the most censored woman on the planet; forbidden from placing her warnings about Sharia law and radical Islam on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Even Uber banned her. In 2020, Loomer decided to make a valiant race for Congress against Democrat incumbent Lois Frankel in an overwhelmingly blue Florida district, which happened to include Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s club and winter residence.

“I get death threats every day,” Laura Loomer says matter-of-factly, as if discussing her junk mail. “I get death threats from Muslims, radical leftists, trannies, you name it.” ‘After what happened to Charlie Kirk, you have to wonder if people are hiding on a roof planning to kill you’ An alligator skull, a bullhorn, a red MAGA hat and a grinning pumpkin sit on a shelf behind Loomer in her pink-lit Florida studio – otherwise known as the spare bedroom of her Gulf Coast rental. This is the headquarters of Loomer Unleashed, the notorious podcast from which she has single-handedly ended the careers of dozens of members of the Trump administration by revealing their alleged treachery. Yet it is very much her future under discussion right now.

Just when you thought American political discourse couldn’t possibly sink any lower, along comes Laura Loomer’s deposition in her defamation of character case against Bill Maher. Last year, Maher made a joke/spread a rumor/talked trash about Loomer having sexual relations with Donald Trump (the comic used the F-word). Loomer filed suit – and somehow that suit has made it to the deposition stage. Cockburn feels a bit soiled at having read the whole 226-page document, but you can say this about Laura Loomer: She’s never dull. Loomer claims she’s never been in room alone with Donald Trump, much less had sex with him, and that all of her contacts with him occur via text messages to his aides.

It took John Thune just two ballots to get the job of the new majority leader of the Senate, replacing Mitch McConnell after eighteen years of rule. Attempts to challenge him by John Cornyn and Rick Scott fell short, with the final tally of the secret ballot (where just about everyone knows how everyone else is voting) led to a 29-24 vote victory.  The South Dakotan is a longtime member of the Republican establishment, originally recruited by the George W. Bush team to challenge the supposedly unbeatable Tom Daschle, the Democratic minority leader at the time, in what became the most expensive campaign of 2004.

As the Republican National Committee launches its annual Winter Meeting in Las Vegas, Trump allies are once again calling for the GOP to oust Ronna McDaniel as its chairwoman. Their preferred replacement? Scott Presler. Presler, for those unfamiliar, first rose to social media and political fame by organizing a clean-up in Baltimore after the former president Donald Trump called the Maryland city a “disgusting, rat- and rodent-infested mess.” Since then, the activist better known on X as “#ThePersistence” launched a Republican voter registration effort and, subsequently, Early Vote Action, a political action committee aimed at getting Republicans to cast their votes before Election Day. Prior to all this, Presler was a co-founder of Gays for Trump during the 2016 election.

Donald Trump is one boomer Laura Loomer can't rely on. The right-wing provocateur came a few thousand votes shy of winning a safe GOP House seat in Florida last year, running a campaign in a district that contains The Villages while relying on "Boomers for Loomer." But there weren’t enough boomers for Loomer last time — and President Trump is now wavering in his support for her, even though he’s both endorsed her and voted for her in one of her previous failed runs for Congress. In tried and true Trumpworld fashion, a crazy Trump idea (in this case, forcing his campaign staff to hire Loomer for an unknown role) was floated to a journalist he trusts (as always, Maggie Haberman) at an outlet he loves reading (in this instance, the New York Times).

Cockburn is no stranger to chaos, in fact, his career depends on it. But even he wasn't prepared for the clusterfuck that ensued during Florida’s primary elections this week. The last few years have been a testament to the fact that anything can happen in US politics, but Cockburn was shocked to hear that Laura Loomer, the conspiracy theorist who claimed that mass shootings in Parkland and Santa Fe were staged, lost to Dan Webster by a mere six points. Running in the Republican primary for Florida’s 11th congressional district, it seems that Loomer gained traction with the gerontocracy. But does the retirement community and Republican stronghold really know who they endorsed? I mean, Loomer makes Alex Jones look sane.