Laura Loomer, Jewish activist who flew on Trump’s plane, says her ties to antisemites shouldn’t undercut her advocacy
Watchdogs said Loomer represents a stand-in for a campaign that is mired in extremism
Gabe Friedman 5:58 PM, Today Laura Loomer arrives at Philadelphia International Airport on The Trump Organization’s Boeing 757 ahead of The ABC News Presidential Debate, Philadelphia, Sept. 10, 2024. (Julia Beverly/Getty Images)
(JTA) — WASHINGTON — Laura Loomer, the far-right Jewish activist who has grown close to Donald Trump, portrays herself as a courageous voice willing to speak out against those who wish harm to the Jewish people.
She has also, in recent years, been embraced by some of the most prominent figures accused of antisemitism, from the rapper known as Ye to Nick Fuentes, the white supremacist activist. She spoke at a convention in 2022 hosted by a white supremacist group, where she called herself a “white advocate.” She also once called herself a “proud Islamophobe.”
And earlier this month, she tweeted that Haitian migrants were “eating people’s pets in Ohio.” The next day, she flew with Trump to his debate with Kamala Harris, where he repeated the same claim onstage, setting off a firestorm of controversy and threats in the heavily Haitian city of Springfield.
Loomer — who describes herself as an investigative reporter but was banned from Uber, Lyft, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter in 2017 and 2018 for Islamophobia — has long been associated with the far right. In the past her outspoken and often outlandish activities have drawn bemusement and mockery. But the former Republican congressional candidate’s friendship with Trump has put her — and her associations — under renewed scrutiny.
In an interview with JTA, Loomer said she is friendly with all comers, regardless of their ideology. She professed not to know why so many Jews criticize her.
“People like me,” she said. “I don’t know why Jewish people want to be so negative towards me. I don’t understand — I’m an ally.”
Loomer, 31, originally from Tucson, Arizona, emerged as a provocateur in the mid 2010s, working with far right outlets like Veritas Media, Rebel News and InfoWars, and hosting a podcast with Jacob Wohl, who later pled guilty to fraud over an attempt to suppress the vote. She has rushed platforms and stages to complain about what she says are fascist tendencies on the left. She chained herself to Twitter headquarters after the platform banned her in 2018. Now a Florida resident, she unsuccessfully ran for Congress in the state twice, in 2020 and 2022.
Loomer’s appearances with Trump come at the point in a presidential campaign when the nominee traditionally pivots toward moderates and away from extremes. To those who monitor extremism, the fact that Trump is publicly hanging out with Loomer is notable.
“What we’re seeing is that there’s an acceptance in certain segments of the right of people with very extreme views, very bigoted and racist and antisemitic views,” said Marilyn Mayo, a senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, who listed Loomer’s associations with Fuentes and others on the bigoted right. “It’s the normalization of bigotry, really, that we’re seeing being played out in so many different ways in our country right now.”
Eric Ward, a senior adviser to the Western States Center, a think tank that tracks extremism, said Loomer was less significant than the influence she seemed to have with Trump.
“It’s not Laura Loomer that’s the real danger,” he said. “It’s the unwillingness of Donald Trump to really distance himself from the conspiratorial worldview of bigotry and the promotion of extremism that has caused political violence to distance himself from it.”
It isn’t just Trump critics raising concerns. Semafor quoted a number of Republicans expressing alarm at Loomer’s influence. “Regardless of any guardrails the Trump campaign has put on her, I don’t think it’s working,” the political news site quoted an unnamed source close to the campaign as saying. A year ago, Trump wanted to hire Loomer for his campaign but was dissuaded by others close to him.
It didn’t help her case earlier this month when Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia congresswoman known for her own dabbling in conspiracy theories, said Loomer crossed a line by saying that Harris, whose mother was Indian, would make the White House smell like curry.
In a press conference earlier this month and then on Truth Social, the social media platform he owns, the former president said he did not always agree with Loomer but made clear he admires her. “Laura has to say what she wants,” he said at the press conference. “She’s a free spirit.”
But this week, the Washington Post quoted anonymous sources close to Trump as saying he would no longer regularly invite her to travel on his plane.
Speaking to JTA, Loomer said she would not share her conversations with Trump. But she wants it known that she is not formally advising him — she is, she says, just someone who happens to have flown on his plane in recent weeks.
“What is crazy to me is the amount or resources they have spent attacking me as an independent journalist. I flew on a plane,” she said. “What did I do that was so wrong? I flew on an airplane? I am a supporter of President Trump. Why is the media devoting so much attention to a private citizen? I flew on an airplane. What did I do? Nobody wants to answer that question because they know I didn’t do anything wrong.”
She provides the same explanations for her associations with white supremacists: She claims the media distorts run-of-the-mill encounters because mainstream journalists resent her success in exposing the left.
“Why are they so afraid of a 31-year-old Jewish-American woman?” she said. “A lot of people don’t like the fact that I’m a very outspoken, brash Jewish woman who also happens to be a diehard Trump supporter. They want to control what every Jew thinks, and they want Jews to be Democrats. I will never subscribe to their idea of who I should be.”
When it comes to Jews and Israel, she echoed Trump’s favored talking points: namely, that Harris is an “antisemite” and that her election would spell the end of the state of Israel.
“President Trump is calling it like it is,” she said. “There is going to be a Holocaust and obliteration of Israel if he doesn’t get back into office, because the Democrats are the party of Jew haters.”
Loomer does acknowledge a friendly relationship with figures and organizations that most Jews would otherwise renounce. But she says the encounters were less malicious than people think.
To take one instance, she referenced a video where she and Fuentes, a Holocaust denier, are clinking glasses and toasting “the hostile takeover of the Republican Party.” She said it was no more than a friendly interaction.
“I’m not going to be negative towards a person if they’re being pleasant towards me,” she said. “I was raised to be nice to people.”
She gave the same explanation regarding a moment in December 2022, after Ye had embarked on a string of antisemitic comments, when the rapper gave a shout out to Loomer. Ye was appearing with Fuentes on Infowars, the show hosted by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, and asked her to call in.
“I can’t help it that people gravitate towards me, people like me,” she said. On the show, she told Alex Jones that it was fine to “call out” Ye for his antisemitism, but she did not believe in censoring him.
“This is about combating cancel culture,” she said on the show. “I’m here to make sure Ye has a right to say what he wants to say, even as a Jewish woman.”
Ye answered, “OK, hit you back and love ya!”
Loomer is not the only figure on the right to associate with Fuentes and Ye. Shortly before that taping of Infowars, Trump famously dined with the two men at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate. Trump later said he did not know who Fuentes was.
In 2022, Loomer gave a speech to American Renaissance, a group that according to the Anti-Defamation League peddles white supremacist pseudoscience. “It was about big tech election interference,” she said. “I don’t understand why I’m not allowed to give a talk about big tech election interference.”
She did, however, refer to herself in the speech as a “white advocate.” She did not disavow that description when speaking to JTA.
“I think there’s a lot of anti-white racism in this country, and I believe that there needs to be advocates to speak out against the racism directed towards white people in America, because Democrats seem to think that it’s okay to attack white people in this country,” she said.
She also did not walk back the “proud Islamophobe” claim. “It’s not irrational for Jews to be fearful of an ideology that explicitly states that it wants to kill them.”
Loomer said that representing herself as a proud Jew while advocating for Trump and his policies was, if anything, a means of repudiating white supremacists and extremists.
“I don’t fit their caricature or their mold of what they’re telling people all these Jews are like,” she said. “They say the Zionists want to open borders, but I’m a Zionist who’s an immigration nationalist. They say. ‘They’re for censorship,’ and I’m like, literally, one of the most censored people in the country. I’ve been very critical of Islam so I don’t fit their stereotypes of Jews.”
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