A massive rift within former President Donald Trump’s inner circle exploded into the open Wednesday night, exposing tensions running high inside MAGAworld after their candidate’s debate disaster.
Two of Trump’s most trusted allies went for each other in a spectacular and public spat after it emerged that far-right commentator Laura Loomer had accompanied Trump on a private plane to the debate.
Axios reported on Thursday that Loomer had been “egging him on” during the flight after his other advisors urged caution and tried to convince Trump to stick to messages on key voter concerns like the economy instead of pushing old grievances and sharing easily debunked conspiracies such as Haitian immigrants eating people’s pets.
Trump appeared to take Loomer’s advice and turned in a fiasco of a performance marred by one rambling diatribe after another. A day later, Republican House Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene chose to jump on a three-day-old Loomer post and kick-start a civil war.
Greene excoriated Loomer on X for an “extremely racist” message she posted about Vice President Kamala Harris.
In the Sept. 8 tweet, which quoted a post by Harris celebrating her South Asian background, Loomer wrote that if the Vice President wins the election “the White House will smell like curry & White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center and the American people will only be able to convey their feedback through a customer satisfaction survey at the end of the call that nobody will understand.”
Three days later, the day after the debate, Loomer—a 9/11 conspiracist—accompanied Trump to Wednesday’s solemn memorial ceremonies in New York City and Pennsylvania.
Greene, who has previously used homophobic and racist slurs and claimed being called a “white supremacist” was akin to a Black person being called the n-word, decided it was finally the moment to call out discrimination.
“This is appalling and extremely racist,” she said on Wednesday, quoting Loomer’s post on X. “It does not represent who we are as Republicans or MAGA. This does not represent President Trump. This type of behavior should not be tolerated ever.”
Greene called on Loomer to remove the bigoted post.
The combative Loomer responded with a series of broadsides, accusing “raging antisemite” Greene of infidelity and of “behaving like a leftist” for attacking her over what she said was a joke. (Greene, for what it’s worth, has a long record of flirting with antisemitic tropes and voted against an antisemitism awareness bill in Congress because she claimed it “could convict Christians of antisemitism for believing the Gospel that says Jesus was handed over to Herod to be crucified by the Jews.”)
“Laura and I used to be friends going back to 2018,” Greene retorted. “I used to defend her and support her.” She suggested Loomer, who has mounted multiple failed congressional bids in Florida, was bitter because she refused campaign advice from Greene that would have helped her win.
The two staunch MAGA figures left their feuding unresolved.
Loomer, a noted Islamophobe who last year shared a video alleging 9/11 attacks were an “inside job”, told the Associated Press that she had been invited to attend the memorial ceremonies with Trump “as a guest”
Not everyone in Trumpworld approved of the guestlist.