By Robert McGreevy
In early May this year, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Marty Makary welcomed Dr. Vinay Prasad – a board-certified oncologist, professor of epidemiology, and ardent critic of Covid measures – into his agency with an exuberant post on X.
Bringing Prasad on board to replace the pro-vaccine Dr. Peter Marks as head of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), Makary lauded Prasad’s credentials and said he “brings the kind of scientific rigor, independence, and transparency we need.”
Shortly after his hiring, Prasad also ascended to the roles of the FDA’s Chief Medical Officer and Chief Scientific Officer. But three months later, he was out of a job.
His voluntary departure was the culmination of what some called a Big Pharma smear campaign, which came after Prasad threatened to derail a controversial gene therapy drug from Sarepta Therapeutics that was linked to the deaths of three children.
Prasad has since, at the behest of Makary and RFK Jr., returned to the FDA. But his messy and public withdrawal followed a pattern of public condemnation and ensuing action from within the Trump Administration based around one figure in particular: Laura Loomer.
Loomer, a guerilla journalist turned Republican Congressional candidate, took to X in mid-July to begin a pressure campaign against Prasad. Tweeting out to her sizable 1.7M followers, Loomer dug up past tweets from Prasad in which he voiced support for Democrats like Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren.
“VINAY PRASAD, THE LEFTIST SABOTEUR UNDERMINING TRUMP’S [FDA], MUST BE FIRED NOW!” she tweeted, calling Prasad a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
Her onslaught ran from July 21 until July 28, when she accused Prasad of owning and stabbing a Trump voodoo doll, a comment Prasad appeared to make in jest. Prasad resigned shortly after the explosive attack.
It’s not the first time Loomer has wielded her platform to affect personnel changes in the Trump Administration. In April, Loomer walked into the White House with a binder full of papers that, according to The New York Times, accused six Trump National Security staffers of being disloyal to the president.
Shortly after the meeting, which included Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Trump fired the six National Security staffers, including senior director of intelligence Brian Walsh.
Trump denied that Loomer’s input had anything to do with the firings. But the record shows she has a clear influence on 47. Trump axed an assistant US attorney from Los Angeles after Loomer bashed him publicly. In March, he revoked Hunter Biden’s security clearance after Loomer tweeted a photo of said detail with Biden in South Africa. And just this week, Trump halted visa approvals for Gazans following Loomer’s assertion that they posed a national security threat.
So who is Laura Loomer? And how did she rise to get the President’s ear? That’s the subject of today’s deep-dive.
Loomer began her career in the public eye as an operative in James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas. A guerilla-style campaign where O’Keefe recruits citizen journalists to covertly record government officials and other powerful people, Veritas has been a controversial fixture in the national media scene.
While legacy media accused the now-dormant organization of deceptive editing, its tactics elicited embarrassing – but often revelatory – information. Numerous officials in the government, schools, and media have had to step down from positions after Veritas “sting” operations.
In the foreword to her book Loomered, O’Keefe describes Loomer as “startlingly brave” and says she goes “right up to the line without crossing it – most of the time.”
Her alma mater, the private Florida college Barry University, deemed she crossed that line during one of her first Veritas stunts in 2015, when she facetiously formed a campus group called the “Sympathetic Students in Support of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.” Loomer covertly filmed a university administrator suggesting that she instead call the group “Sympathetic Students in Support of the Middle East.”
After O’Keefe’s group released the video, kicking off what he called a “firestorm” of controversy, Barry University suspended and ultimately expelled Loomer, banning her from ever setting foot on campus again.
Loomer would eventually receive her diploma (following a $75,000 Veritas-funded legal battle), and the saga would kickstart a career of controversy that also saw her get banned or deplatformed by virtually all social media companies, financial institutions, and even Uber Eats.
In 2018, Twitter banned Loomer’s account after she tweeted, “Isn’t it ironic how the twitter moment used to celebrate ‘women, LGBTQ, and minorities’ is a picture of [Minnesota Democratic Representative] Ilhan Omar?” She added, “Ilhan is pro Sharia Ilhan is pro-FGM [female genital mutilation] Under Sharia, homosexuals are oppressed & killed. Women are abused & forced to wear the hijab. Ilhan is anti-Jewish.” The platform claimed these posts were a violation of its hateful conduct policy.
Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube all followed Twitter in short order, eventually joined by a number of financial services platforms, including PayPal. Banishment to what Loomer called the “digital gulag” left her largely unable to perform or get paid for her job as an independent journalist and, she argues in her book, left her no choice but to run for Congress.
It was likely this Congressional run that first put her on Trump’s radar.
Her political career began in 2020 in Florida’s 21st district, a district that includes Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. After Loomer won the district’s Republican primary, she earned an attaboy from Trump, who tweeted, “Great going Laura. You have a great chance against a Pelosi puppet!”
Still, Loomer ultimately lost to Democratic incumbent Lois Frankel in the district’s general election. A subsequent campaign for a different Florida district in 2022 was also unsuccessful, that time falling in the GOP primary. But that same year, Elon Musk reinstated her Twitter account – and a year later, she was flying on Trump’s plane.
When exactly she first linked up with Trump is hard to pin down. She tweeted in 2018 that Trump winked at her three times and mouthed “good job” while she was in the VIP row of a Minnesota Trump rally, but she doesn’t mention any official meeting with Trump in her 2021 book. Yet in August of that year, she bragged to Vanity Fair that she “was with President Trump three times in one week.”
Somewhere between that moment and Trump’s second White House run, she went from Trump superfan to one of his most trusted advisors.
In a recent interview with The New York Times, Loomer recalled when Trump called her for the first time, in 2023, and asked her to come visit him at Mar-a-Lago. “I was so excited,” she told the paper.
Trump urged her to run for Congress for a third time, but she objected, instead telling him that her primary focus was helping him return to the White House. Trump immediately instructed Susie Wiles, then his campaign co-chair, to hire Loomer for the campaign.
Loomer began filling out paperwork but was subsequently informed she wouldn’t be hired after all. Aides reportedly intervened, taking exception to a litany of controversial past statements from Loomer.
In 2017, she tweeted the hashtag “#ProudIslamaphobe.” In September 2024, Trump caught flak for bringing her with him to meet New York firefighters on the 23rd anniversary of 9/11 after she had posted a 2023 video to X calling the terror attack “an inside job.”
Despite her appeal to Trump – and desire to work with him – Loomer found few allies willing to help her onto Trump’s payroll.
One reason is the long list of Republican enemies she’s made: South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham called her “toxic,” North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis said “she regularly utters disgusting garbage,” and even Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is often accused by many of Loomer’s leftwing detractors of similarly “conspiratorial” rhetoric, has called Loomer “a liar” and “dangerous.”
That MAGAwoman feud gave birth to perhaps the most ludicrous exchange in the history of legal depositions in which, during her ongoing defamation lawsuit against Bill Maher and HBO, Loomer is asked to explain her accusation that Greene has “Arby’s in her pants.”
See the excerpt from the deposition below:
Questioner: Can you explain to me what it means to say to her that ‘the Arby’s in her pants’?”
Loomer: “Well, Arby’s … Arby’s sells roast beef.”
Q: “Right. Can you tell me what -- why you were talking about ‘the Arby’s in her pants’?”
Loomer: “Well, it’s just a -- an expression.”
Q: “What is the expression trying to convey?”
Loomer: “It conveys the reason why she got a divorce by her own admission.”
Q: “Because she had roast beef in her pants?”
Loomer: “Yeah.”
Q: “She’d put roast beef in her pants; that’s what you’re trying to say there? You’re literally saying she put Arby’s in her pants?”
Loomer: “I’m saying she literally -- it’s so ridiculous. I’m saying she literally put Arby’s in her pants. Yes.”
Q: “You’re not making a slur about her?
Loomer: “No.”
Q: “You’re literally saying she put an Arby’s sandwich in her pants; is that right?”
Loomer: “Yes. That’s correct. That’s correct.”
Q: “Why are you laughing?”
Loomer: “Because I just think it’s so funny.”
Q: “What is your basis for saying she put Arby’s in her pants?”
Loomer: “I just think it’s so funny. I just think it’s so funny.”
Q: “What is your basis for saying she put Arby’s in her pants?”
Loomer: “She carries roast beef in her pockets.”
Q: “What is your basis for saying she puts roast beef in her pockets and in her pants?”
Loomer: “Because I know she likes roast beef.”
Q: “So what is your basis for saying she had Arby’s in her pants?
Loomer: “Because I know she likes to eat at Arby’s.”
Q: “And she likes to put it in her pants; you know that?”
Loomer: “Yeah.”
Q: “She puts Arby’s in her pants?”
Loomer: “Yeah. She does.”
Q: “Okay. If I ask Marjorie Taylor Greene, she would tell you that she puts Arby’s in her pants?”
Loomer: “I -- it’s my best belief that she would tell you that. Yes.”
Q: “Okay. Are you making a derogatory comment about her sex life by talking about Arby’s in her pants?”
Loomer: “No. I’m talking about Arby’s, the sandwiches. I’m talking about Arby’s. I would -- I’m a very direct person. If I was making a derogatory comment, I would have said it.”
Loomer’s lawyer: “All right. Let’s take a break.”
Q: “Actually, I’d like to finish this line of questioning.”
Loomer: “I just think -- I just think it’s so funny.”
Loomer’s lawyer: “Well, you can finish this exhibit. Go ahead.”
Q: “I mean, I’d like to finish.”
Loomer’s lawyer: “If you’d like to deal more with Arby’s, you know.”
Q: “No. I have a couple more questions I’d like to ask in this line.”
Loomer’s lawyer: “Where’s the meat?”
Q: ”So Lindsey Graham also –”
Loomer: “It’s in her pants.”
Loomer’s sense of humor was on clear display in that exchange, but her importance in DC is no laughing matter.
“People here are terrified of her,” an anonymous White House official reportedly told The Free Press in July. “Every time she gets brought up, you can feel the air in the room drop by like 15 degrees. A lot of people are worried about being ‘Loomered.’”
While unable to land an official role, Loomer arguably has as much pull in DC as anybody these days. Her profile steadily growing, and her influence on Trump as strong as ever, she is undoubtedly somebody to keep your eye on in the proverbial Game of Thrones taking place in the nation’s capital.