President Trump fired the head of the NSA — not because of a cyber attack, but because conservative activist Laura Loomer said so. How did she become so influential? This episode was produced by Gabrielle Berbey and Victoria Chamberlin, edited by Miranda Kennedy, fact checked by Amanda Lewellyn, engineered by Andrea Kristinsdottir and Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Noel King. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast Support Today, Explained by becoming a Vox Member today: http://www.vox.com/members Far-right activist Laura Loomer. Photo by Jacob M. Langston for The Washington Post via Getty Images. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who is Laura Loomer and why is she influential?
When President Trump fired Timothy Hawk, the head of the National Security Administration and U.S. Cyber Command last week, he didn't say why. But Laura Loomer, who'd met with Trump a day earlier, took credit. She said on Twitter that Hawk was disloyal to President Trump. Laura Loomer, chaos agent, activist, proud Islamophobe, her words, influencer, trickster, trespasser.
I'm just really confused. You're on private property, so you're trespassing.
I'm really confused. Nancy said everyone was welcome here. Did you know who Nancy Pelosi is? Yes, I do.
She has Trump's ear, maybe even his respect. You don't want to be loomered. If you're loomered, you're in deep trouble. And she's just getting started in Washington. That's ahead on Today Explained.
Megan Rapinoe here. This week on A Touch More, we are launching our much-anticipated book club, and we're doing it with Abby Wambach and Glennon Doyle, who will introduce their upcoming book, We Can Do Hard Things, Answers to Life's 20 Questions. Plus, we've got some fun and important updates from The W and the NWSL, and of course, we've got a new Are You a Megan or Are You a Sue?
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It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King. And some of the best reporting I've seen on Laura Loomer comes from The Wall Street Journal's Vera Bergen-Gruen. Vera is a national security reporter who also covered the online right for a time. And so she knows her Laura Loomer lore.
Laura Loomer is a far-right Internet personality. She kind of defies characterization, to be honest.
I am the most censored person in this country, hands down, if not the most censored woman in the world.
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Chapter 2: What are some notable actions and stunts by Laura Loomer?
Why are you supporting the weaponization of governments against President Trump? My name's Laura Loomer.
Gosh, you're the crazy person.
I'm the crazy person? I think you're the crazy person supporting the weaponization of governments against Donald Trump. You don't need to run for president, you need to get on a treadmill and run.
She disrupted a production of Julius Caesar in 2017 in Central Park.
Because they were trying to make, they were being satirical about Trump and she didn't like that.
I'm protecting our Constitution. I'm using my constitutional right of free speech and protest to protest against the bastardization of Shakespeare, really.
She's chained herself to, you know, the doors of Twitter's headquarters.
My name is Laura Loomer. I'm a conservative investigative journalist. And today I'm here at Twitter. And on this side, that's the tweet that I was permanently banned for.
She's appeared at politicians' homes. And all of this is just always recorded and promoted and posted on social media. And none of it's ever quite cohesive. It's not always necessarily very smart, but it's very attention-calling because she's trying to make a point.
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Chapter 3: How did Laura Loomer establish a connection with President Trump?
So that's one of the really interesting things about her as a character is that she's quite transparent in many ways. She on social media, she posts these very long rants, especially now that you're allowed to, you know, basically go on forever. And she kind of seems to be very stream of consciousness. And she will just say very bluntly, she said this again a few days ago.
She very bluntly will say, I know better than anyone else who is actually loyal to President Trump and to his agenda and who is kind of a poser or who is kind of a deep state enemy.
The thing that I harped on the most during the campaign season was, you know, the importance of vetting, vetting, vetting. I thought that we were keeping a binder full of receipts.
And she says that she's vetting these people. And this kind of became a thing of hers during the last election. She said she was vetting, you know, who was the most MAGA of them all, right? You know, she was going into their employment histories, all of their previous statements, things they had liked, people they'd interacted with.
As far as I can tell, it's basically just using Google and Twitter the way most of us would do. She doesn't seem to be going much deeper. But she's kind of refashioned herself as somebody who's vetting people around the president and warning him if she thinks someone's not on his side. And she tends to post, quote unquote, receipts all over the Internet when she finds these people.
The provocateur right, which she's a part of, is full of conspiracists and coconuts and etc., Where does she fit in?
She definitely falls on the fringiest of the fringe, I would say. And you can tell because you've had a lot of people who themselves have been labeled as fringe, like Marjorie Taylor Greene and some others who say that she's crazy and who say that, you know, they are kind of on the more conservative end.
Her rhetoric and her tone does not match the base, does not match MAGA, does not match most Republicans I know. And I'm... completely denouncing it. I'm over it. And I would encourage anyone else that matches her statements to stop.
And, you know, she said she was being unfairly targeted because she was a conservative. But because she has this, she likes to be kind of offensive and, you know, really speak in pretty shocking terms about conspiracies, you know, 9-11 was an inside job, kind of trading these kind of things back and forth.
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Chapter 4: What role does loyalty to Trump play in Laura Loomer's activism?
But on top of that, we find out that she walked in with a folder with over a dozen people. She said were part of the administration that weren't loyal enough to him, that were somehow enemies to his agenda. And after she walked out, some of them were fired.
And President Trump's firing of the head of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command has rattled lawmakers.
And conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer is thanking President Trump for being receptive to her report of disloyal people in the National Security Agency.
The head of the NSA and his deputy and some other national security officials suddenly were gone. And she has taken credit for it. You know, she's been saying, you know, pretty not subtly, she's been kind of taking credit for having raised these people to the president's attention.
Yeah, she actually went in, I was told, to the West Wing with a list of around a dozen names and urged President Donald Trump to fire them.
A lot of this was more about Loomer's recommendations to Trump go across the government, expand across various different government agencies, including the State Department and intelligence agencies.
The White House hasn't confirmed that it was directly connected, but, you know, it seems pretty obvious that something happened there.
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Chapter 5: Where does Laura Loomer fit within the far-right political spectrum?
Vera Bergen-Gruen of The Wall Street Journal coming up. Who's Laura Loomer's next target? And is it you? JK, JK, JK. We'll be back in a minute.
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Chapter 6: What happened during Laura Loomer's White House meeting with Trump?
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Chapter 7: How did Laura Loomer's actions impact the firing of the NSA head?
You're listening to Today Explained.
We're back with Vera Bergen-Gruen. She's a national security reporter for The Wall Street Journal. President Trump fired several national security officials last week, but the firing that got the most attention was the head of the NSA and of U.S. Cyber Command.
So the head of the NSA was an Air Force general called Timothy Hawk. And he and his deputy were not people who were prone to go after Trump online or have any public statements where they're necessarily, you know, opposing him by any means.
Her problem seems to have been that he had been in previous administrations and that he was some kind of deep state official who was opposing, you know, Trump's agenda.
We have now found ourselves as a part of the team that's defending our electoral process. because of our adversary's intent to target it from a cyber perspective and information. How we counter disinformation together is a national effort.
And she had kind of flagged him on Twitter and called him a traitor. As a Biden appointee, General Hawk had no place serving in the Trump administration, given that he was handpicked by General Milley, who was accused of committing treason by President Trump.
Why would we want an NSA director who is referred to Biden after being hand-selected by Milley, who told China he would side with them over Trump?
This is part of a longstanding suspicion among a lot of Trump supporters that people within the government are working against him and trying to make it harder for him to get his goals done. So these two people, again, career officials, not exactly well-known names or flashy people, and they were just gone after she met with President Trump.
Someone is running the NSA now, though. Yes, they have an acting director now. Gotcha. OK, so the question is, President Trump likes people who are loyal to him, for sure. But really, one wonders, how on earth could Laura Loomer have enough influence to get the president, her claim, to fire people in his national security agency?
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