Laura Loomer, a right-wing conspiracy theorist who believes 9/11 was an inside job, has joined Donald Trump on the campaign trail in recent days, a move that has raised eyebrows among his Republican supporters.
Ms Loomer, 31, is banned on nearly every social media platform, from Instagram and Twitter, and claims even Uber and Chase bank have shut down her accounts.
She joined the former president during campaign appearances this week, including at Ground Zero for a 9/11 memorial.
This angered many, given she has promoted the false notion the terror attack was somehow related to then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announcing $2.3 trillion in “lost” government funds on 10 September 2001.
“23 years later, and there’s still a lot of unanswered questions… The American people deserve to know the entire truth. Not just what our lying government chose to tell us,” Loomer posted on Friday, alongside a video of Trump in 2001 questioning whether airplanes could cause explosions like the ones that happened at the Twin Towers.
Her stepped-up presence among Trump’s entourage has come as he made a number of staff changes, including bringing back veterans of his 2016 and 2020 campaigns.
A senior official from the 2020 campaign team said that helps explain why Loomer is no longer being kept at arm’s length.
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“The people that have the authority to stop it are hanging on to their jobs,” the former official said. “So, are you going to pick that fight with him?”
Who is Laura Loomer?
Born in Arizona in 1993, Loomer has styled herself as an investigative journalist and activist. She worked for Project Veritas (a far-right activist group that produces deceptively edited videos of its undercover operations) and Alex Jones’s Infowars.
She ran for Congress in Florida in 2020, with Trump’s support, and celebrated her primary win at a party with the founder of the far-right extremist group the Proud Boys. She would later lose the House race to Democrat Lois Frankel.
She also ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2022.
She has been a long-time Trump supporter and promoted a string of political conspiracy theories, including that Kamala Harris is not black.
She has also repeated the baseless claims that Haitian immigrants are eating pets in Springfield, Ohio – something Trump himself would go on to repeat during his election debate with Ms Harris.
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But on Friday, appearing to distance himself somewhat, he said: “I don’t control Laura. Laura – she’s a, she’s a free spirit. Well, I don’t know. I mean, look, I can’t tell Laura what to do.”
And she has divided even the right of the political spectrum.
Tommy Robinson declared he was a “big fan” of Ms Loomer when she appeared on his podcast in August last year.
But Marjorie Taylor Greene, another outspoken Trump supporter has taken issue with Ms Loomer after she wrote the White House “will smell like curry” if Ms Harris is elected.
Greene said Ms Loomer’s comments were “appalling and extremely racist” and did “not represent who we are as Republicans or MAGA”.
