A new candidate won the primary last night in Trump’s new “home” district of Palm Beach. It’s a woman by the name of Laura Loomer. He’s very proud of her:
This piece from a few months back gives you a flavor of the person Trump is congratulating and almost certainly voted for himself. (She loves the MAGA…)
The Conservative Political Action Conference banned anti-Muslim provocateur Laura Loomer from its final day on Saturday, after she used her media credentials to harass reporters.
Loomer has risen to prominence on the right through a practice she calls “Loomering,” in which she aggressively confronts or heckles public figures. On Friday, Loomer badgered reporters at CPAC with a camera crew, using her media pass to enter the media filing area to pursue reporters from CNN and other outlets after they had already declined to speak with her.
Loomer and CPAC didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The CPAC ban is just the latest ban for Loomer, who has already been booted from a number of services. Loomer has been kicked off of Twitter, PayPal, Uber, Lyft, and even food delivery app Uber Eats for her attacks on Muslims, which included calling for a ride-hailing app that wouldn’t employ Muslims.
After harassing reporters on Friday, Loomer was refused access to the event on Saturday, according to a video she posted on YouTube. In the clip, Loomer attempts to convince CPAC security guards to let her into the conference anyway.
Now she is the Republican Party’s candidate for congress in the president’s home district. Okaaaay.
I don’t quite know how to react to the reporting by the mainstream media on this. The Washington Post describes Loomer as an “activist” which I suppose is literally true but only if you describe David Duke in the same terms.
As The Washington Post’s Rachael Bade and Isaac Stanley-Becker reported, the GOP is struggling to navigate Trump’s embrace of fringe candidates who have made statements denigrating Americans’ religions and ethnicities. That tendency was on display last week when the president backed Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia GOP candidate who openly backs the QAnon conspiracy theory.
Among the tweets Trump shared on Tuesday night was a post from Greene with a photo of her posing alongside Loomer and a demand Twitter reinstate Loomer’s account.
Maybe she’ll speak at the GOP convention next week.
Loomer is the fringiest of the fringe, a scary right-wing lunatic. They have always been around. But they are running for congress and winning the nomination of the Republican Party. This strikes me as a development worth noting.