United States
Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene WAS the female darling of the Republican far-right. No longer. The new girl on the block is 31-year-old Laura Loomer who is so far to the right that right-wing Ms Greene has called her “mentally unstable and a documented liar.”
Ms Loomer is also emerging as a confidante of Donald Trump. She travelled on his plane to the 10 September presidential debate in Philadelphia and is said to have fed him the story about immigrants eating pets in Ohio.
She continued with the former president to New York and was with him when he attended the bipartisan services to commemorate the 9/11 terrorist attack. This despite the fact that Ms Loomer has claimed that 9/11 was an “inside job” perpetrated by the Deep State liberal elite.
Laura Loomer loves right-wing conspiracy theories. In her playbook the mass shootings at Last Vegas, El Paso and Parkland were all staged by the anti-gun lobby. The winter storm that disrupted the Iowa caucus was created by meteorologists hired by Deep State Democrats to help Republican candidate Nikki Haley.
Ms Loomer proudly identifies as an “Islamaphobe.” When told that 2,000 Muslim immigrants had drowned while crossing the Mediterranean, she tweeted: “Good. Here’s to 2,000 more. “
Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have all banned her for spreading hate speech and misinformation, although Elon Musk reinstated her account. She has also been banned by the online banking services Paypal, Gofundme and Venmo. The taxi services Uber and Lyfft have barred her from using their vehicles because of her attempts to ban Muslim taxi drivers. She is suing all of the above – unsuccessfully.
Twice Ms Loomer has run for Congress for a Florida seat. Twice she lost and twice she was endorsed by Donald Trump. She has written for Alex Jones’s Infowars; The Geller Report which pushed the Obama birther lie; Rebel Media which describes as a counter-Jihad platform and Veritas, a major broadcaster of conspiracy theories.
Ms Loomer denies that she is a White Supremacist but proudly admits to being a White Nationalist. She is not a Christian nationalist because she is Jewish and has been the target of death threats from the anti-Semitic wing of America’s far right.
Her loyalty to Donald Trump is rock solid. She told the Washington Post: “If Trump doesn’t get in I don’t have anything. Ms Loomer attacked Florida governor Ron de Santis and his wife for daring to challenge the former president and has advised Trump that he should make a list of those who have challenged him in the courts and elsewhere and, when re-elected president, “execute them for treason.”
United States – more
What if Trump loses? Will there be a repeat of January 6 when rioters stormed the US capitol in a vain attempt to block the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory?
Unlikely. But only because this time around Biden – not Trump – controls the security apparatus. And he has put in place an array of measures to protect not only the capitol building, but the entire metropolitan area of Washington DC.
No. If there is a threat to the election it will be in the voting booths, the counting rooms, the election boards and the courts.
As in 2020, Trump is planting the seeds for a legal challenge in case the vote goes against him. This time his objections will be based on illegal immigrants voting for Harris. He told a rally in Las Vegas this summer that “the only way they can beat us is to cheat.”
In the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin the Trump-controlled Republican National Committee has put 102 election deniers on local and state election boards. In Georgia, for instance, the election deniers control the state-wide board and have already introduced rules that allow them to delay voter certification while they conduct “investigations” into “unspecified irregularities.”