Antonia Hitchens

As he says to Congress, no dissent, just vote for what I like.

Here's an outside advisor who's willing to say, you're doing it wrong, listen to me.

It's the randomness and the kind of willingness to see something

on the internet that might pique your interest, that most closely describes the way in which they interact.

There's no sense of a formal role or even a formal rhythm to the way in which the conversations take place.

And they're both very cagey about even kind of putting any specifics to the nature of when or how they're in touch.

So in early April, after Loomer meets with the president in the Oval Office, he immediately dismisses six members of his National Security Council, as well as General Timothy Hawk and his deputy, Wendy Noble.

Hawk was the head of the National Security Agency at that time.

And those are because of connections she imagines are too profound between those individuals and Mark Milley and James Clapper, who had been

kind of linked to criticizing Trump.

And in the aftermath of that meeting, I think what we see for the first time is Loomer taking credit for firing more than seven high-ranking national security officials with no clear reason behind these sort of vague, specious allegations of just general disloyalty.

And so I think that's when she begins to really be able to present herself as someone to be scared of, because if Loomer thinks you're disloyal, then

that could be something that becomes actionable.

I think what's so interesting here is that depending on who you ask, she's either this completely extraneous, random, nuisance figure or someone to be truly frightened of.

And I've definitely come to believe that there are people who were preemptively

not hired because of different accusations she had either kind of in the works that she was going to make or that she had already made and was threatening to take public and I wouldn't say fear so much maybe as vexation from a managerial perspective of is it really worth this whole boondoggle for us to go through what's going to be you know a big online mess when we could just hire somebody else and so that I think kind of sense of

Now, Loomer says she doesn't get paid for being Trump's loyalty enforcer.

As soon as I started reporting on Loomer in Washington, I would hear every day, she's getting paid and everyone is working with her and everyone is compromised in some way because Loomer is in the orbit that is now necessary to use when you want to influence the president.

And so I had kind of carried that through my reporting as much as I could.

And of course, if you can't confirm something, it's not true.