Noel King (3:03)

There's a story about Laura Loomer that I heard a while back that I really love. When she was in college, she tried to start a chapter supporting ISIS on her college campus. An honors student at Barry University told.

Vera Bergengruin (3:17)

Instructors she wanted to start that group.

Noel King (3:19)

To help promote education in the Islamic State. But she was working undercover for a non profit.

Vera Bergengruin (3:24)

Project Veritas alleges the school is sympathetic to the terror group isis.

Noel King (3:29)

And they argue a secretly recorded video.

Vera Bergengruin (3:31)

Taken by a student proves it.

Noel King (3:33)

Laura Loomer is like. She's like a prankster. Tell us about some of the pranks.

Vera Bergengruin (3:38)

Exactly. And it's clear she's always been this way. She's not someone who necessarily picked it up recently. Right. Once these things became popular. Right. But she seems to be a big fan of, you know, Project Veritas, you know, which is another kind of right wing stunt outfit, for lack of a better word. James O'Keefe with Project Veritas. You're on camera here talking about giving anal sex toys and butt plugs to little children. Sir, why are you running? Why are you running away? But she basically loves to do these very public things that she films on video. For example, she tried to vote wearing a burqa under the name Huber Abedin, who was Hillary Clinton's aide in 2016, to make a point about voter fraud. And these things always push very much towards offensive and towards, you know, just really attention calling.

Laura Loomer (4:30)

Why are you supporting the weaponization of government against President Trump?

Noel King (4:33)

Who are you?

Laura Loomer (4:33)

I am Laura Limmer.

Noel King (4:35)

Oh, gosh.

Vera Bergengruin (4:35)

You're the crazy person I support.

Laura Loomer (4:37)

I'm the crazy person. I think you're the crazy person. Supporting the weaponization of government against Donald Trump. You don't need to run for president. Sad acts. You need to get on a treadmill and run. You just got limited.

Vera Bergengruin (4:49)

She disrupted a production of Julius Caesar in 2017 in Central Park.

Unknown (4:54)

Freedom. Political violence against the right.

Vera Bergengruin (4:59)

All right, ladies and gentlemen, we're going to pause. We're going to pause. Security. Because they were trying to make, you know, they were being satirical about Trump and she didn't like that.

Laura Loomer (5:08)

I'm protecting our Constitution. I'm using my constitutional right of free speech and protest to protest against the bastardization of Shakespeare. Really?

Vera Bergengruin (5:18)

She's chained herself to, you know, the doors of Twitter's headquarters.

Laura Loomer (5:23)

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.

Vera Bergengruin (5:35)

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 knows she's trying to make a point.

Noel King (5:52)

How did Laura Loomer and President Trump actually meet?

Vera Bergengruin (5:56)

So apparently, you know, she was always a huge Trump fan and she at some point just must have gotten onto his radar, as sometimes his very vocal supporters on social media do. And she seems to just have, you know, over and over again tried to, you know, she bought tickets to his golf tournaments. She was trying to put herself in his orbit. And I don't think it's actually quite clear when they first really met, but at one point it seemed to work when she started appearing next to him in the last couple of years. So at one point she appeared in a video with him at Bedminster at his golf course in New Jersey.

Laura Loomer (6:31)

Hey, everybody, we're here at Bedminster. I'm with the greatest president ever, President Donald Trump.

Vera Bergengruin (6:36)

And he, you know, does the Trump thing where he says, you know, she's a great person, great to have you, and you've been really very special, and you work hard. She loves me. She's so complimentary towards me. You are a very opinionated lady, I have to tell you that. And in my opinion, I like that. And, you know, he seemed to be aware that she was pretty fringe, even for some of the people who sometimes tend to be in his orbit when it comes to the far right. But he still was, seemed willing to let her in, and then she increasingly appeared around him during the last election.

Noel King (7:08)

Laura Loomer seems to have a thing with President Trump and loyalty. Can you just talk a bit about how she seems to be pegging people as loyal or disloyal to the president and how long that's gone on for.

Vera Bergengruin (7:23)

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 into his agenda and who is kind of opposer or who is kind of a deep state enemy.

Laura Loomer (7:54)

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.

Vera Bergengruin (8:03)

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, you know, not on his side. And she tends to put, you know, post quote, unquote receipts all over the Internet when she finds these people.

Noel King (8:40)

The, the provocateur, right, which she's a part of, is full of, of conspiracists and coconuts and et cetera. Where does she fit in?

Vera Bergengruin (8:52)

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.

Laura Loomer (9:12)

Does not match most Republicans I know.

Vera Bergengruin (9:15)

And I'm completely denouncing it. I'm over it.

Laura Loomer (9:19)

And I would encourage anyone else that.

Vera Bergengruin (9:21)

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, 911 was an inside job kind of trading these kind of things back and forth. She's, you know, she's relegated to the very fringes because it's not only things that are necessarily related to President Trump. It's a particular worldview that, that she's really not shy about putting all over the Internet.

Noel King (9:55)

So last week, Laura Loomer got herself an audience with President Trump. They met at the White House, and you've done the kind of TikTok reporting on this. What happened?

Vera Bergengruin (10:05)

I think what's important to remember is that it would have made headlines even if she had just sat with him in the Oval Office. That would have been shocking enough for a lot of people that someone like her, who again, is pretty toxic even in the far right circles, would have made her way into the Oval Office and gotten a sit down with President Trump. 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.

Laura Loomer (10:38)

And President Trump's firing of the head of the national security agency and U.S.

Noel King (10:42)

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.

Vera Bergengruin (10:53)

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, having raised these people to the president's attention.

Laura Loomer (11:08)

Yeah, she actually went in, I was.

Vera Bergengruin (11:09)

Told, to the West Wing with a list of around a dozen names and.

Noel King (11:14)

Urged President Donald Trump to fire them.

Vera Bergengruin (11:17)

A lot of this was more about.

Noel King (11:19)

Rumors, recommendations to Trump. Go across the government, expand across various different government agencies, including the State Department and intelligence agencies.

Vera Bergengruin (11:28)

The White House hasn't confirmed that it was directly connected, but, you know, it seems pretty obvious that something happened there.

Noel King (11:40)

Vera Bergengruin 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.

Unknown (12:04)

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Laura Loomer (12:10)

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Vera Bergengruin (12:18)

You'Re forming a memory, and that takes a lot of work.

Unknown (12:21)

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Vera Bergengruin (12:45)

The memory system is actually quite wise.

Laura Loomer (12:47)

It's picking and choosing things from the.

Vera Bergengruin (12:50)

Day that it will consolidate overnight. Those are things that tell the memory system, you better remember this because this could impact my survival later on.

Laura Loomer (13:00)

But that doesn't necessarily include things like.

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Vera Bergengruin (15:00)

You'Re listening to Today Explained.

Noel King (15:05)

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.

Vera Bergengruin (15:20)

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.

Unknown (15:44)

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.

Vera Bergengruin (15:58)

And she had kind of flagged him on Twitter and called him a traitor.

Noel King (16:03)

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.

Laura Loomer (16:16)

Who is referred to Biden after being.

Noel King (16:18)

Hand selected by Milley, who told China he would side with them over Trump?

Vera Bergengruin (16:23)

This is part of a long standing suspicion among a lot of Trump's 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.

Noel King (16:42)

Someone is running the NSA now, though. Yeah.

Vera Bergengruin (16:45)

Yes, they have an acting director now.

Noel King (16:47)

Gotcha. Okay, 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?

Vera Bergengruin (17:09)

I'm sure there's a lot of people in Trump's own inner circle who are wondering that, because there's no lack of people who are being kind of flagged as people who should be fired. Right. We had signal gauge, we had war chats. We've had so many things in the last couple of weeks. And it was pretty surprising to have someone like Laura Loomer come in and again, apparently have the kind of influence to get someone fired who wasn't exactly on most people's radar. And another thing to remember is that she had tried to get hired by the Trump campaign and a lot of people around him, including Susie Wiles, who's now his chief of staff, people in his campaign thought that was a really bad idea and made sure to freeze her out. And she still seems to always worm her way back in. Because Trump likes people like her. Trump likes people who are offensive and brash and really supportive of him. And so he tends to call her a wonderful person. Laura, how are you? You look so beautiful. As always. He thinks that his base likes her and that she says a lot of things publicly that he can say. Right. There's a big jump between that and, as I said, having someone even come into the White House and then having the discussion at the White House be, you know, who should get fired by this 31 year old online influencer.

Noel King (18:24)

Does Laura Loomer have either an official or unofficial position in the Trump White House?

Vera Bergengruin (18:30)

Not that we know of, but we know that she really, really wants one. She's been very blunt, almost begging. I mean, it's, it's not subtle on Twitter every couple of days, how badly she wants to be, quote, unquote, vetting people.

Laura Loomer (18:47)

Vetting, vetting, vetting.

Vera Bergengruin (18:48)

And what we do know is that she tried to get hired by the transition once Trump won the election. They were hiring all these people for his new administration. And she kind of saw her opening and tried to promote herself as someone who could be doing this, quote, unquote, vetting. And again, she's tried to establish this reputation. She also calls herself a journalist. That's kind of important to remember. She tends to put a lot of screenshots on Twitter. They're all highlighted.

Laura Loomer (19:12)

I use a very non traditional form of journalism in order to raise awareness about issues. Guerrilla journalism, very aggressive, in your face tactics. I certainly don't break the law.

Noel King (19:29)

Why did Laura Loomer set her sights on the nsa? Of all the agencies she could have taken a look at, Doge is going hard after just about everything in Washington. Why did she, she pick on the nsa?

Vera Bergengruin (19:39)

I mean, everyone had thought that when Elon Musk walked into the NSA with his Doge guys, you know, that was game over. There was going to be some huge problem, mass layoffs, and, you know, they left and nothing major happened. And no one could really have imagined that it would be Laura Loomer of all people, this person that I'm sure most of them have never heard of, who would actually get the head of their agency fired. But, you know, it's unclear whether she specifically had her sights on these people for any particular reason or because they were more high profile. You know, again, it's important to remember just the level of distrust that intelligence agencies hold, you know, in the imagination of the MAGA faithful as people who are working from within the government who have all, you know, have all this information. And in their view, since the first administration, we're trying to, you know, work against President Trump. And there's just a lot of distrust when it comes to that.

Noel King (20:31)

The NSA keeps a rather low profile. What kinds of threats to the country does it work on? What's its job?

Vera Bergengruin (20:37)

So the NSA is in charge of just as a broad portfolio. It works obviously on cybersecurity, it collects a lot of intelligence, foreign communications, and it's a national security agency that provides all of this in order to, you know, to, to the president and to, to shares with other agencies in order to make national security. And, you know, it's been in the crosshairs in recent years, you know, for collecting information on Americans. It's always been kind of seen as this potentially creepy eavesdropping agency. So, you know, ever since the Edward Snowden days, NSA and the intelligence community in general is focused on getting intelligence wherever it can by any means possible. Now, increasingly we see that it's happening domestically. So, you know, that's probably part of the reason that it has this association in Americans minds. But again, for the people on President Trump, they have so much distrust of intelligence agencies, of intelligence officials who they think are, you know, spying on the president, trying to get him. They were spying on President Trump's campaign, spying on not only the President, Trump's campaign, looks like spying on him during the transition period and potentially even while he was president of the United States. Ultimately, it's an agency that's responsible for intelligence gathering and sharing with foreign allies. And, you know, there's really no reason that someone like Laura Loomer, again, would know whether someone would be a traitor to the president, what that would look like.

Noel King (22:08)

Does, does the firing of these officials at the nsa, does it leave the United States more vulnerable to attacks, to cyber attacks, for example?

Vera Bergengruin (22:17)

Yes and no. It's not an agency that necessarily stops working when something like this happens. But of course, you remove the head of the agency and his deputy very abruptly. That's a lot of experience and institutional knowledge that leaves. But really it's the uncertainty that this creates and again, the fear in many senses that they could be next, that this is just a very destabilizing move to do it. Also, you know, raises the question of who could be bringing other people to someone like Loomer's attention who feels like they can, you know, push certain people out. There could be a lot of, you know, there could be either foreign adversaries or others who maybe consider Loomer a valuable person to raise these people to. And just in general, the fact that this could be enough that claiming that you are not fully loyal to the president, and that definition tends to vary day by day, is enough to push out such a high level agency head is, is destabilizing on its own, even though the agency, of course, will continue doing its job.

Noel King (23:20)

Vera, you're kind of the perfect person to talk to on this story because you are a national security reporter, but you also spent many years looking into right wing figures on the Internet, including Laura Loomer. Which means you didn't just learn about her last week, like many people. Now that she has pulled this off, this is an enormous thing that Laura Loomer has managed to do. Do we know anything about what she will ask President Trump to do next or who she might target next?

Vera Bergengruin (23:51)

She seems to have set her sights on Earl Matthews next, who's Trump's nominee to be the Pentagon's top lawyer. And she seems to be taking issue with the fact that he was responsible, or she says he was responsible for getting Hegseth blocked from working at Biden's inauguration because of some tattoos he has which are tied to extremist movements. And apparently they saw them, they told him he couldn't work the inauguration because at that time they were being very careful with anyone associated with extremist symbols. But she seems to have taken real issue with him. And whereas in the past she used to go after people every single day on Twitter and no one seemed to pay attention, now everyone's really worried whenever she brings anyone up. The other noteworthy thing is that unlike the other people who Laura Loomer basically got fired, who haven't said anything, Earl Matthews posted a long response on Twitter where he kind of seemed to imply that somebody was putting her up to this. He said, you know, you have to ask yourself, who benefits from this? It's clear she thinks that this is working and she has started her own vetting agency. Those are her words, called Loomerdia Strategies. And, you know, she set up a Twitter account which didn't really have almost any followers before the NSA news, which now seems to have gotten quite a bit of pickup. We don't really know who her clients are, but she has a pretty prominent endorsement from President Trump himself, who says, if you're Loomered, you're in deep trouble. That's the end of your career in a sense, as if that's a, you know, a verb and it's something that you can do, which basically means investigating someone and getting them fired from their job. What I think is pretty clear that a lot more people in Washington are going to be very closely watching Laura Loomis Twitter feed to see who she mentions next, because they don't want to be on the end of that. And it's clear that she's got the power to get people fired or get their nominations scuttled. And I think we're going to be seeing a lot more of that.

Noel King (25:56)

Vera Bergengruin is a national security reporter for the Wall Street Journal. WSJ.com Gabrielle Burbet and Victoria Chamberlain produced Today's show. Miranda Kennedy edited, Andrea Christian's daughter and Patrick Boyd engineered and Amanda Llewellyn checked the facts. The rest of us Hadi Mwagdi, Peter Balanon, Rosen Miles Bryan, Avishai Artsy, Jolie Myers, Devin Schwartz, Sean Ramasfirm, Carla Javier, Amina El Saadi and Laura Bullard. Today Explained is distributed by wnyc. The show is a part of vox. You can support our journalism by joining our membership program today. In this economy? Yeah, if you can, it's optional. Go to Vox.com members to sign up. I'm Noel King. It's Today Explained.