Antonia Hitchens

candidates who had not endorsed Trump's kind of big lie about the 2020 election.

And so, in Loomer's telling of both of her elections, Trump not only voted for her, but endorsed her strongly.

If you speak to other people who were around during that time, they recall a meeting between the president, Susie Wiles, now his chief of staff, and Loomer's then campaign manager, where

She petitioned Trump for two hours to endorse her candidate, Laura Loomer, and he declined, saying that she was too controversial and he didn't want to get involved.

Loomer has since taken tweets that the president made about, you know, Laura being a patriot or Laura being a strong person to say that Trump endorsed her, but he never kind of weighed in on her race.

But she still began to count him as a really close ally, despite, you know, what other stories might say there.

Yeah.

I think that in the years when Loomer was kicked off of most of these social media websites and Trump was starting to make this rise, she really began to see her story as deeply, deeply bound up with his, as these two people who were not taken seriously, not really seen as anyone who could be part of the mainstream.

In Trump's case, you know, later, he's also not allowed to post on Twitter.

And she saw their kind of similar marginal roles in American politics as

And not just bound up, but also kind of rising and falling at the same time.

And, you know, being emotionally connected to him, even though for years they weren't speaking.

I think this begins in 2014 when Loomer is in college in Miami and she happens to see Trump on a golf course.

And, you know, at this point, he doesn't have a Secret Service detail.

So she gets as close to him as she possibly can and yells, you should run for president.

I love you.

And they take a selfie together.

And to her, that kind of kicks off this relationship, as it were, to her that, you know, she understands what he should do.

And he understands that she has advice to give him that's valid.

But it's not clear that there's really any direct communication until they have a meeting together at Mar-a-Lago in 2023.