Close Donald Trump ally Laura Loomer told a white nationalist conference in 2022 that she considered herself a “white advocate”, according to a recording of the speech obtained by the Guardian.
Loomer has come under scrutiny in recent days after being seen accompanying Trump on a flight to the presidential debate on Tuesday, and a subsequent string of racist tweets aimed at Kamala Harris.
That caused a political firestorm after Trump’s disastrous debate performance, with Harris emerging the clear winner. In particular, Trump’s raising of false claims around Haitian immigrants in Ohio eating pets triggered outrage and mockery of him.
Some observers have placed the blame on Trump’s performance partly due to his recent closeness to Loomer, including being pictured standing with him in his entourage at this week’s 9/11 commemorations.
The revelation of Loomer’s comments about being an advocate for white people is likely to further fuel the controversy around Trump’s relationship with Loomer, not least because they are just the latest in a long line of extremist remarks by the podcaster and self-described journalist.
Her attendance at the American Renaissance conference was reported at the time by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), but the contents of her speech have not been scrutinized until now.
The American Renaissance conference, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, is a venue where “racist ‘intellectuals’ rub shoulders with Klansmen, neo-Nazis and other white supremacists”.
Loomer spoke to the conference in November 2022, after losing a Republican primary in Florida’s conservative 11th district that August. To the applause of the audience, Loomer said: “I consider myself to be a white advocate and I openly campaigned for the United States Congress as a white advocate.”
Apart from her claim to be a “white advocate”, Loomer’s speech was focused on her grievances with traditional and social media companies and the Republican party, all of whom she blamed for her loss.
She claimed that during her campaign, “local TV stations would actually not allow me to have a congressional debate even though every other congressional candidate was able to have a televised debate in their district, because they called me a white supremacist”.
Loomer continued: “And they said that I was, you know, too much of a nationalist and too far right, because I openly ran my campaign to the right of the GOP.”
She said: “I have been a Republican my entire life, but unfortunately we live in a two-party system, which really just feels like a uniparty, but I’m here to tell you today that the Republican party is no longer rightwing enough for me.”
She then struck a hopeful note about a third party. “So perhaps they’re going to be an alternative in the future some day.”
Loomer then turned her sights on “Kevin McCarthy and the Congressional Leadership Fund and the Republican party”, saying they had “made such an effort this year to spend hundreds of millions of dollars … to get the Hispanic vote pushing to get the Black vote” while they also “used millions of dollars, by their own admission, to campaign against America First nationalist candidates”.
Loomer told the gathered white nationalists that “the top three issues I focused on in my campaign were election integrity, combating big tech social media censorship and election interference, and a 10-year minimum immigration moratorium”.
She said: “I was one of the first candidates to campaign in favor of mass deportations in an immigration moratorium and I was the first candidate to campaign on breaking up big tech.”
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Loomer’s anti-immigrant rhetoric to the conference echoes Trump’s policy positions. In recent days the former president has repeated his promises to carry out mass deportations, and during the debate he falsely accused Haitian immigrants of eating pets.
Loomer told the conference crowd that her positions had “demonized – as I mentioned – as an extremist by even my own Republican party”.
But the remarks at the conference hardly stand alone.
Weeks earlier, in a podcast recording before the conference, Loomer thanked Jared Taylor, the podcast’s host and conference organizer, for his “white advocacy and being a white advocate and pioneering the intellectual discussion, right around race and demographics in this country”.
In March, in her podcast appearance before the primary, Loomer told Taylor that “my district is also the whitest district in the entire state of Florida”, and that she was pursuing “issues of [critical race theory] and anti-white racism and anti-white hatred”, and opposing the “anti-white Christian mentality the Democrats are pushing”.
Loomer asserted to Taylor that Democrats were “trying to persecute white people. They’re trying to persecute Christians, the most persecuted people in the world.”
Loomer added: “I look forward to being their advocate when I win my race and, you know, get elected as their next congresswoman.”
Loomer subsequently lost to Congressman Daniel Webster.
Loomer emerged as an anti-Muslim, pro-Trump activist during Trump’s first run at the White House in 2016. She has a long history of controversies, including protesting against a performance of Julius Caesar she saw as anti-Trump, handcuffing herself to Twitter’s headquarters to protest her deplatforming there, and now attacking migrants and Kamala Harris in the wake of Trump’s debate performance, which has been widely portrayed as disastrous for his campaign.
The Guardian has contacted Loomer for comment.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
