Laura Loomer re-entered the Trump White House’s periphery this week at precisely the worst possible moment for a president trying to stop a firestorm from spreading.
As Donald Trump continues battling the blaze of controversy surrounding his administration’s reversal on the issue of releasing a list of Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged co-conspirators, the so-called “Epstein Client List,” Loomer’s own contribution to the mess may end up letting what little air is left out of the president’s tires.
On Wednesday afternoon, the acidic conservative activist celebrated the firing of Maurene Comey, an assistant U.S. attorney and daughter of the former FBI Director James Comey. The latter is a reviled figure among many Republicans and Democrats in Washington over his handling of investigations into both Hillary Clinton and Trump during the 2016 election season.
Her celebration came after Loomer personally lobbied the administration for Comey’s firing, publicly and privately. In typical shoot-first form, she labeled Attorney General Pam Bondi the sexist nickname “Blondi” as she bombarded Twitter with posts calling for Comey to be sacked.
The reason behind the firing of his daughter is obvious to anyone versed in the far-right’s lore: she represented the clearest image of the “Deep State” conspiracy which Trump and his lackeys concocted to explain the prosecution of members of his campaign in 2016 as well as the DoJ’s efforts to prosecute Trump himself after her father was fired in 2017.
But to be clear, that reason isn’t going to be what the vast majority of Americans see about this latest development, especially if Democrats latch on to the issue at all. Instead, the headline (or tweets) will be much more succinct: Trump fires the prosecutor who put away Ghislaine Maxwell as his base revolts over the Epstein Client List.
That’s right: at the peak of the uproar over the Justice Department’s insistence that such a list doesn’t even exist, Loomer talked Trump into firing a key figure behind the effort to hold Epstein and his co-conspirator accountable. And he did it the same day as he “Truthed” and deleted a post on his social media platform ripping apart his followers for feeling let down.
The attack lines write themselves. Will Saletan, a writer and commentator for The Bulwark, tweeted in response to Comey’s firing: “It’s becoming difficult to explain the president’s behavior as the conduct of an innocent man.”
It’s some of Trumpworld’s most prominent defenders, too, like Dana Loesch (former spokeswoman for the NRA) and Riley Gaines, the face of the right-wing anti-transgender movement.
Responding to Trump on Wednesday calling his followers “stupid” and “foolish” in a now-deleted Truth Social posting, Gaines wrote: “Was it stupid & foolish when he campaigned on releasing the files? Are Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, Dan Bongino, and Alina Habba all foolish & stupid for peddling this for the past 6 months? Why on earth is he doing this?”
This isn’t the first time Loomer has played an oversized role in the second Trump White House. It’s just the first time it has immediately blown up in the president’s face.
Loomer previously orchestrated a purge of the national security council (NSC) earlier this year after accusing staff members of disloyalty and leaking to the media. Mike Waltz, the national security adviser, was eventually shifted out of the White House to serve as U.N. ambassador after accidentally adding a reporter in his contacts to a Signal chain where information about imminent attack plans were shared by senior officials.
Accusations of a cover-up are quickly evolving into full-scale assumptions of Trump’s own direct involvement in Epstein’s known criminal activities. And the administration’s refusal to release more information after very publicly promising the opposite and inviting right-wing influencers and operatives like Jack Posobiec to the White House to receive big flashy binders marked “The Epstein Files” is doing the president absolutely no favors.
On Thursday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also announced that the administration would not appoint a special prosecutor to review the investigation into Epstein, hardly a surprise given that Trump has repeatedly urged his followers to stop talking about it.
That was a direct rebuke of Steve Bannon, War Room podcast host and one of Trump’s longtime advisers — though the two were closer during Trump’s first term. Bannon has called for the appointment of such an official multiple times on his show over the past weeks.
New polling is clear: Trump’s Epstein flip-flop is quickly becoming the least popular thing he’s ever done. Even the majority of his own MAGA supporters, Republicans and independents both, are in near-uniform opposition to his refusal to release the “client list”, the Justice Department’s reversal-of-fact on the issue of whether it exists or not, and especially Trump’s own bluster and blunder as he attempts to force the story out of the headlines.
And if this week is any indication, Trump and his team have come up with nothing that can move the story out of the headlines or satisfy the MAGA base’s hunger for answers — except by following through on a promise to deliver the moon.
