Laura Loomer has been dubbed “Trump’s Rasputin” as her influence grows with her quest to oust administration officials she deems insufficiently loyal to President Donald Trump.
The 32-year-old has courted controversy as a right-wing online provocateur, making statements in support of white nationalism, using anti-Islam rhetoric, and spreading conspiracy theories, including on 9/11.
She has been getting senior Trump administration officials fired by digging up old social media posts, going through their employment records, and looking at their past political donations. The New York Times dubbed her “Trump’s blunt instrument.”
“One of my friends said it made me sound like Trump’s Rasputin,” she told The Telegraph in an interview published Tuesday, referencing the adviser who heavily influenced the tsar during the final years of the Russian Empire. While Grigori Rasputin was viewed as a prophet and visionary in some quarters, others took him for a fraud. He was assassinated in 1916.
Loomer’s strategy is to trawl officials’ old tweets, political donations, and previous employment records to find her next target. After spreading anything questionable she finds to her 1.7 million followers on X, she goes to Trump with her findings.
In April, several members of the National Security Council were fired after Loomer met with Trump. She later confirmed the meeting on social media.
“There are still people in and around the West Wing who are LEAKING to the hostile, left-wing media about President Trump’s *confidential* and *private* meetings in the Oval Office,” she posted.
“It was an honor to meet with President Trump and present him with my research findings,” she added.
Last month, the general counsel of the National Security Agency, April Falcon Doss, was fired just a day after Loomer met the president in the Oval Office.
She also attacked the top vaccine regulator, Vinay Prasad, as a “progressive leftist saboteur undermining President Trump’s Food and Drug Administration.” Prasad later left his position.
In May, she said that former National Security Advisor Mike Waltz had been “Loomered” following his ouster. Waltz has since been nominated to serve as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
Loomer told The Telegraph that she sees herself “as an extra set of eyes, like a watchdog, for the administration to help them so they don’t get totally screwed.”
And she appears to have the support of the president.
“I think she’s a patriot, and she gets excited because of the fact that she’s a patriot,” Trump told reporters Sunday. “And she doesn’t like things going on that she thinks are bad for the country. I like her.”
But there have been points of disagreement. Loomer called Trump’s acceptance of a plane from Qatar a “stain” on his presidency, and he appears to be ignoring her calls to oust Attorney General Pam Bondi over the Epstein Files fallout.
Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon told the paper that Loomer’s “combination of tenacity and courage” was a rarity in Washington, which he said was filled with “lazy, shiftless cowards.”
“There are very few America First people associated with the government,” he said. “Just a handful, and the Pentagon is the worst. This is why you need a purge of these people. And Loomer is the instrument.”
Loomer, who has no official role in the White House, also told The Telegraph that she believed the president had a “vetting crisis”.
“But I take it upon myself as an investigative journalist to do the vetting. And it’s like journalism because these are news stories,” she explained.
Some on Trump’s staff have attempted to keep her at arm’s length. Loomer reportedly grew furious after she was stopped from speaking to Trump at the Kennedy Center during a performance of Les Miserables in June by a White House aide.
Loomer has been removed from several social media sites for violating policies on hate speech and sharing misinformation. She has called Islam a “cancer” and described Muslims as “savages.”
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