Lindsey Graham Gets Dragged Into MTG’s Messy Laura Loomer Fight

Alt-right activist and virulently racist conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer’s entrance into Donald Trump’s inner fold has shaken some of his longest-term allies, but the intra-MAGA fight is starting to turn seriously ugly.

After Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and Senator Lindsey Graham came down hard on Loomer for a string of racist online posts about Vice President Kamala Harris (who Loomer said would make the White House “smell like curry”), the self-described “proud Islamophobe” decided to take some pot shots at MAGAworld’s longtime figureheads.

“Lindsey Graham has never been loyal to President Trump,” Loomer wrote on X Thursday. “He got booed in his own state at a TRUMP RALLY and was booed off stage because he is DISLOYAL to Trump and the American people. He probably shouldn’t be giving out advice to Donald Trump.”

But the attacks only got more childish from there, with Loomer overtly questioning the South Carolinian’s leadership by probing his sexuality.

“When is Lindsay [sic] coming out of the closet?” Loomer said. “We all know you’re Gay, Lindsey.… And that’s ok. It’s ok. It’s 2024. There’s nothing wrong with Gay people. I like men too. You and I have something in common we can bond over. Just be honest about it. Nobody is going to judge you for being open about who you are.”

The insult was in direct response to reports that Graham had called Loomer a “toxic” presence and had reportedly warned Trump to “make sure” that her appearance in his entourage during a 9/11 ceremony “doesn’t become a bigger story.” (Loomer has repeatedly claimed that 9/11 was an inside job.)

So far, Graham and Greene are the only two Republicans to publicly express anger at Loomer’s increased presence. But other Trump insiders worry her new spot at the Republican presidential nominee’s side is a sign that the campaign is struggling—and that staffers are more concerned with keeping their jobs than keeping Trump on track.

Donald Trump’s supporters, still upset about the former president’s poor debate performance on Tuesday, are now alleging that ABC News gave Kamala Harris questions before the debate.

On Thursday, right-wing influencer and January 6 participant Philip Anderson posted on X a “confirmation” claiming that a whistleblower at ABC signed an affidavit alleging that Harris received debate questions ahead of time, was assured that Trump would be fact-checked while she wouldn’t be, and that “several other factors were built into the debate to give Kamal a significant advantage.”

Anderson didn’t name his source, although a different X user, Black Insurrectionist, posted the same message two hours earlier. Another right-wing website, Leading Report, picked up the rumor, which was then boosted by billionaire Bill Ackman. The conspiracy theory may have originated from the Trump team, or Trump himself, who told Fox News on Wednesday that Harris was “awfully familiar” with the debate’s topics. He also threatened to shut the network down.

ABC News has denied the allegations, with a spokesperson telling The Daily Beast, “Absolutely not. Harris was not given any questions before the debate.”

The debate’s rules, released by the network on September 4, specify, “No topics or questions will be shared in advance with campaigns or candidates.” ABC’s spokesperson also said that the debate’s moderators, Linsey Davis and David Muir, were not in contact with anyone from the Harris campaign.

It’s more desperate flailing from MAGAworld, who can’t accept that Trump simply struck out Tuesday night and may have advanced cognitive decline, which even experts have noticed. Perhaps Trump’s die-hard supporters need to accept a difficult truth: Harris set a trap, Trump fell for it, and it could be the convicted felon’s final unraveling.

After getting flack this week for her 9/11 conspiracy theories and her history of racist and inflammatory remarks, instead of being quiet, Laura Loomer is doubling down. 

Loomer made headlines this week as Donald Trump allowed the conspiracy theorist to accompany him to an official 9/11 memorial service on Wednesday. Loomer previously claimed that she believed the September 11 attacks were an “inside job” by the U.S. government. 

After the incident caused a schism in the Republican Party, with both Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and Senator Lindsey Graham calling out Loomer and urging Trump to distance himself, Loomer is instead digging a bigger hole for herself.  

“23 years later, and there’s still a lot of unanswered questions,” she wrote on X Friday morning. “The 9/11 documents are still classified to this day. The American people deserve to know the entire truth. Not just what our lying government chose to tell us.”

Attached to the tweet is a video of Trump speaking with WWOR/UPN 9 News on September 11, 2001. “How could [a plane] possibly go through the steel?” Trump can be heard saying in the video. “I happen to think that they had not only a plane but bombs that exploded almost simultaneously.” 

“It was almost like a can of soup,” Trump added. “It’s an amazing thing.” 

It seems as though Loomer believes she thinks she’s in good company to continue to push her conspiracy theories, whether that be about 9/11, mass shootings, or immigrants. 

“PS: Whatever you do.… Do NOT google Building 7,” wrote Loomer on X, expanding on another aspect of her 9/11-truther dogma. 

Springfield, Ohio, Mayor Rob Rue is setting the record straight after his town’s city hall was evacuated due to a bomb threat.

Rue spoke with CNN’s Laura Coates Thursday night to hit back at the outlandish claims that Haitian immigrants had begun eating their neighbors’ pets. He asserted that while it had been “difficult” to adjust to the influx of new residents, the city was certainly not “imploding” on itself.

“Unfortunately, right now we have to focus on making sure this rhetoric is dispelled, that these rumors are just—they’re just not true. You know, Springfield is a beautiful place and your pets are safe in Springfield,” Rue said, laughing slightly at how insane it all sounded.

Coates played a clip of Donald Trump giving a speech in Arizona earlier Thursday, during which the former president claimed that Haitian immigrants had descended upon Springfield, “destroying their entire way of life.” Trump again claimed that migrants were snatching geese from local parks and “even walking off with their pets.”

Coates sighed, exasperated, while Rue shook his head. “If you could speak to the former president what would you tell him?” Coates asked.

“We need help, not hate,” Rue repeated. He criticized lawmakers who carelessly cast the city of Springfield in a negative light.

“We have a beautiful city, and we need, we need the national stage to pay attention to what their words are doing to cities like ours,” Rue added. “We don’t need this pushback that is hurting our citizens and hurting our community—I would say that to anybody who would take a mic and say those things.”

Donald Trump flubbed the last debate. His allies know it, his fundraisers know it—but that doesn’t mean they’re willing to admit it.

On Thursday, the Republican presidential nominee announced that he had decided not to debate Vice President Kamala Harris for a second time, writing in a lengthy rant on Truth Social that “THERE WILL BE NO THIRD DEBATE!” (Apparently he’s counting his debate against Joe Biden.)

But less than 24 hours after the major reversal, Trump’s team was already working to explain away why the country would be getting less of their candidate.

“I admire President Trump for not debating her again,” South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem told Fox News. “He is recognizing the fact that it is a waste of time, that she is not going to say what she truly believes, she’s not going to be truthful with the American people, and he’s going to take his argument directly to families and to people that live in this country that are impacted by her policies.”

In an interview with CNN, former J.D. Vance Senate staffer Ryan Girdusky argued that Trump was vindicated in his decision on the basis that the vice president is “the least vetted candidate” in U.S. history.

Former Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard touted a stale campaign line, telling Fox News that the debate was fundamentally flawed because of the presence of two ABC moderators.

“President Trump went into a debate where it was three versus one. It was completely biased,” Gabbard said. “Why would he walk into that again?”

(In reality, ABC actually allowed Trump to speak for six minutes longer than his Democratic opponent over the duration of the debate.)

But Republican donors saw through the act. Behind the scenes of the political theater, conservative fundraisers saw Trump’s reversal as a candidate left with no other options following a “disaster” debate performance.

“I think a lot of the donors, or at least the ones that I was texting with the night of the debate, were not exactly thrilled about how that debate went down,” GOP fundraiser Noelle Nikpour told Fox News Thursday. “What I will tell you, I do think it’s smart for Donald Trump not to do the debate. I think that that was a good decision with the campaign, and I’ll tell you why. Because depending on when that debate will be scheduled, and if he has another repeat performance like he did, I don’t know if the campaign can recover that quickly. I don’t think they have enough time to recover from that.”