"They eat dogs and cats": Laura Loomer, the agitator who dazzles Trump and alarms the Republicans"
The conspirator has been censored several times on social media for spreading conspiracy theories and radical messages that seduce the former president, who is increasingly estranged from his campaign advisors.
"They are eating the dogs, the people who arrived, they are eating the cats. (...) This is what is happening in our country, and it's a shame." When Donald Trump uttered this phrase in the debate to the astonished look of Kamala Harris, many of the Republican Party's advisers were left with their hands on their heads because they knew exactly where it came from: the extremist influencer Laura Loomer, increasingly close to the former president, had been promoting that false information about the arrival of immigrants to the U.S. on her social media for days.
Loomer, a very popular social agitator within the American far-right media bubble, has been gaining followers for years at the cost of provocation and embracing countless conspiracy theories. She has claimed that 9/11 was a false flag attack, suggested that Biden was behind the attempt to assassinate Trump, and defined herself as a "proud Islamophobe."
Her history of extremist comments and attacks have led her to be censored from major social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. In fact, to the latter, now called X, she only returned after Elon Musk, also a Trump admirer, bought the platform.
In recent weeks, she has traveled on several occasions on the ex-president's plane, including the journey to Philadelphia to attend the presidential debate, and her increasingly noticeable influence on the tycoon is unsettling his campaign advisors and other members of the Republican Party.
"Laura is a supporter of mine, as are many people. She speaks very positively of the campaign. I don't control Laura. Laura has to say what she wants. She is a free spirit," Trump himself responded to CNN this Friday when questioned about his relationship with the influencer.
Two days earlier, on the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, television cameras recorded Loomer as just another member of the team accompanying Trump to the commemorative events held in New York. While the mogul was taking photos at a firehouse, the activist was waiting outside next to his campaign managers, Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, whom the press has been speculating about their dismissal for weeks.
Loomer's presence at 9/11-related events was particularly noteworthy because she posted a video last year claiming that it was a false flag attack, a conspiracy theory widely spread in certain internet circles.
"I don't understand what the problem is with me going to a September 11 memorial. In fact, the people who greeted President Trump at the memorial were very happy to see me," Loomer herself defended before the American press.
After several photographs of the activist disembarking from the plane on which Trump travels with his team of advisors and bodyguards were published, the campaign avoided giving explanations and took refuge in focusing on "the souls that are no longer there and the heroes who saved the lives of other Americans."
However, that day made increasingly clear the strong bond between Trump and Loomer, forged over the years by a mutual admiration that is causing tensions within the party.
"He likes her. It's important to remember that last year there was a debate about hiring her," a Trump team member who requested not to be identified told CNN.
According to the influential Washington newspaper Axios, Loomer even was interviewed last year to join the campaign's leadership team, but Wiles (a co-director) did everything possible to prevent her hiring.
"She is toxic"
Loomer's increasingly prominent presence in Trump's views and speeches is also re-fracturing the Republican Party, which had managed to regroup for the presidential elections after spending the last three years deeply divided over the figure of the former president.
"I don't usually say this, but this person's story is really toxic. I don't think it's helpful at all," one of Trump's closest senators, Lindsey Graham, told the Huffington Post this week.
But the most surprising reprimand came from congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who had always been one of the loudest and most fanatical voices in the circle of Trump loyalists.
This week, Greene described one of Looner's tweets as "horrific and extremely racist." In the denounced message, the activist stated that if Harris were elected president, the White House "will smell like curry and speeches will be made through a call center", a clear reference to Kamala Harris's origin, whose mother was born in India.
"This does not represent who we are as Republicans or MAGA (Make America Great Again, Trump's slogan). This does not represent President Trump. This type of behavior should never be tolerated," Greene added in her criticism.
A quick look at Laura Loomer's profile on X (formerly Twitter), where she has over a million followers, reveals all sorts of inflammatory messages: "Kamala Harris wants to separate children from their parents if they refuse to change their gender," says one tweet. "With Kamala, illegal immigrants will murder you," adds another.
Dogs and cats
In her secondary account, where she promotes her own podcast, one of her recent shared messages refers to the hoax that Trump himself spread in the electoral debate on Tuesday, in front of over 60 million viewers, about immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, supposedly "eating the town residents' pets."
David Muir, the moderator, immediately fact-checked Trump's claims and reminded that Springfield city authorities had previously stated that there was no credible evidence of pets "harmed, injured, or abused by people in the immigrant community of the city."
"People on television have said it," Trump retorted.
"There's no evidence of that," the host insisted.
The hoax, which had been circulating for days, constructed —as usual— a fallacy with data taken out of context, such as an old video of a woman being arrested in another locality, Canton, and where police officers asked her about a cat.
That same Tuesday, hours before the debate, Trump's running mate, vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance, admitted that the information could be false, but Trump didn't acknowledge this retraction and took the hoax to one of the most decisive moments of the presidential race, thus managing to create one of the videos that is causing the most damage to his campaign.
When Trump landed in Philadelphia hours before the showdown, Loomer was among the few allies who disembarked from his private plane.
New circle of Trump
Since then, more details have emerged about the relationship between the activist and the former president: Loomer also resides in Florida, in fact, she has tried several times to become a congresswoman in that state, and she frequently visits Trump's residence at Mar-a-Lago.
Sources close to the party indicate that after the assassination attempt he suffered in Pennsylvania last July, Trump —inclined to surround himself with people who idolize him and to pay attention to conspiracy theories— has been moving away from his more "formal" team to focus on internet figures and similar activists.
According to the New York Times, during the debate, about twenty conservative activists gathered at a hotel in Philadelphia summoned by Trump's campaign. Among them were Chaya Raichik, accused of spreading transphobic content and defamation campaigns against schools, hospitals, and libraries; Jack Posobiec, a podcaster who spread theories like "pizzagate"; and Rogan O'Handley, who denies the result of the 2020 elections.
*This article has been automatically translated using artificial intelligence
