The president celebrated the outspoken Islamophobe’s Republican primary win in Florida, along with a “future Republican Star”—and QAnon conspiracist—in Georgia. QAnon’s followers, he told reporters Wednesday, “love our country.”
In 2018, Laura Loomer, far-right conspiracy theorist, frequent laughing stock of the internet, and self-described “#ProudIslamophobe,” handcuffed herself to the outside of Twitter’s office building in New York for more than two hours. The stunt was aimed at pressuring the website to reinstate her Twitter account, as she had been banned on the platform—which, to this day, still grants white nationalist Richard Spencer the space to air out his views—for violating rules against hateful conduct. Loomer’s offline bigotry includes walking up to people she assumes are Muslims to ask them to disavow terrorist attacks and famously struggles to get anywhere in New York City. “I’m late to the NYPD press conference because I couldn’t find a non Muslim cab or @Uber @lyft driver for over 30 min! This is insanity,” she wrote in a 2017 tweet, which was just one of many similar racist outbursts that culminated in the 27-year-old being banned from PayPal, Uber, Lyft, and even Uber Eats.
Less than two years later, there is at least one notable institution still in her corner. “Great going Laura,” tweeted Donald Trump in response to the news that Loomer, who is currently running for Florida’s 21st Congressional District, had won the race’s Republican primary. “You have a great chance against a Pelosi puppet!” he added, while also retweeting news articles and supportive commentary about her win throughout Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. Loomer is now looking to defeat Representative Lois Frankel, the four-term Democratic incumbent in November. The president’s congratulatory tweets are notable for more reasons than just his seeming support for an out-and-out racist with long shot congressional aspirations—which is not entirely surprising given that his 2016 campaign revolved around a proposed ban on all Muslims from entering the U.S.—as the South Florida district Loomer is hoping to seize control of is home to his “Winter White House,” i.e. Trump’s Palm Beach property and Mar-a-Lago resort.
Trump did not weigh in on the race until the six-candidate primary process was over, but the president’s close congressional ally Representative Matt Gaetz did throw his support behind fellow millennial Loomer. When pressed Wednesday for comment on the president’s tweets, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany avoided addressing Loomer’s views and racist meltdowns, only saying instead that he “routinely congratulates” Republican primary victors and that “he hasn’t done a deep dive into” Loomer’s history. Additionally, Loomer bragged during her Tuesday night celebration that she had received a call from Republican Party chairman Ronna McDaniel, who she claimed had anointed her a “political rock star.”
The odds of Loomer dethroning Frankel are very slim, but her primary win offers a look at what the future of Republican congressional races could look like and the thumbs-up thrown her way by the president suggests that he welcomes a party shift toward the younger, outwardly more extreme outliers. Trump’s recent endorsement of congressional nominee Marjorie Taylor Greene—a supporter of the deranged QAnon conspiracy theory that claims, in part, that Trump is in a secret war against an Illuminati pedophile cabal—who won her primary race in Georgia, marked another telling sign that this trend is here to stay. (Greene has also made racist, Islamophobic, and anti-Semitic comments). Trump called Green, who is just one of 15 QAnon-tied candidates set to represent the GOP in November, a “future Republican Star” and “a real WINNER!” and added in a presser last week that “she had a tremendous victory. So absolutely, I did congratulate her.” However, when asked on Friday for his thoughts on QAnon, which the FBI flagged as a potential terrorist threat last year, the president refused to answer. However, on Wednesday, he spoke favorably about the QAnon movement. “I’ve heard these are people who love our country,” Trump told reporters.
His refusal to distance himself is all the more telling given that his Twitter habits has subtly done the talking for him. Vice News reported that since the start of the pandemic, the president has promoted 90 tweets from 49 pro-QAnon accounts for all of his 85 million followers to see—amplification that is no doubt appreciated by Trump’s many supporters who bring “Q” merchandise to his rallies and the millions who are members of QAnon Facebook groups.
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