'A very sad day': Laura Loomer laments Proud Boys' seditious conspiracy conviction
Laura Loomer – the anti-Muslim activist that former President Donald Trump wanted to hire last month – took to Truth Social Thursday to condemn the seditious conspiracy convictions of four members of the Proud Boys in connection to the January 6 insurrection.
Loomer lamented: “A very sad day in America today.
“The Proud Boys trial verdicts are in. I was in DC for parts of the 4-month long Proud Boys trial and it’s the biggest travesty of justice I’ve seen in my life.”
Loomer ran a competitive race for Congress last year in Florida’s 11th District, losing in the Republican Party primary by just a slim margin. She won the GOP nomination in 2020 for the state’s 21st District but lost in a landslide to Democratic Rep. Lois Frankel.
That history belies efforts by some to portray Loomer as far outside the Republican mainstream. Last month, The Hill reported that “Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), one of Trump’s staunchest supporters in Congress, tweeted that Loomer is “mentally unstable and a documented liar” and “can not be trusted.”
Greene accused Loomer of attacking her after the congresswoman backed Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) for the Speaker’s gavel.
That report also noted Loomer “was banned from ride-sharing apps Uber and Lyft in 2017 after tweeting that she “never want[s] to support another Islamic immigrant driver,” and calling for “someone … to create a non-Islamic form of @uber or @lyft.”
She was banned from Twitter after a series of anti-Muslim posts, including one targeting Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), one of the first Muslim women elected to Congress, that made incendiary claims about Islam. She was reinstated after Elon Musk purchased the platform.
But Loomer apparently wasn’t too extreme for Trump. He recently told aides to give her a 2024 campaign role before backing off, according to the New York Times.
“Mr. Trump met with Ms. Loomer recently and directed advisers to give her a role in support of his candidacy, two of the people familiar with the move said.
“...Ms. Loomer attended the former president’s speech at Mar-a-Lago, his resort and residence in Palm Beach, Fla.
“Some of Mr. Trump’s aides were said to have concerns that such a hire would cause a backlash, given her history of inflammatory statements and her embrace of the Republican Party’s fringes.
“That proved to be correct: The New York Times’s report on the potential hire ignited a firestorm among some of Mr. Trump’s most vocal conservative supporters, and by late Friday, a high-ranking campaign official said Ms. Loomer was no longer going to be hired.”