One of the less successful ventures I worked on was a deservedly forgotten 40-episode effort; a game show called MIND OF A MAN. The show, which was ultimately born out of financial necessity after a far more promising project in the same space proved to be too costly, featured female contestants trying to determine how groups of men answered theoretically revealing questions about their preferences in life, love and the pursuit of happiness. Feel free to judge for yourself how much of a misfire this was, but I assure you Nielsen made theirs quickly and decisively.
I was reminded of this flop both by a recent reconnection with one of my old GSN colleagues who blindly defended it even to this day, and by being train-wreck fascinated by the latest example of how accurate Andy Warhol was about people’s 15 minutes of fame, one Laura Elizabeth Loomer. And I have to tell you, I think Laura Loomer would have cleaned up (if you abscribe that phrase to a top prize of $10,000) on the show.
Loomer, of course, has already gone beyond the Warhol limit this week alone, having become the subject of a Thursday NEW YORK TIMES profile from Ken Bensinger:
Five years ago Laura Loomer, a far-right activist with a history of expressing bigoted views and a knack for generating publicity, filed an application for a trademark to protect her work in “the field of political activism.”
Ms. Loomer, 31, part of a generation of web-savvy right-wing influencers, decided to trademark the term she had coined for her signature move of ambushing people with unexpected, often embarrassing questions. She called it getting “Loomered.”
Already a well-known figure among internet obsessives thanks to her anti-Muslim activism, undercover sting operations and web-savvy political stunts, Ms. Loomer found herself at the center of the presidential campaign this week when she traveled with former President Donald J. Trump. She went with him to Philadelphia for the presidential debate, and then accompanied him to Sept. 11 memorial events in New York City and Shanksville, Pa., which drew pointed criticism from Democrats and Republicans because she had previously called Sept. 11 “an inside job.”
And within this window, just as he slipped in what turned out to be a call to action for the Proud Boys (“Stand Back And Stand By!”) back in 2020, he used the spotlight of a Presidential debate to introduce the rest of us to one of Loomer’s favorite topics of late, the supposed takeover of the rural Ohio town of Springfield by illegal Haitian migrants who seem to have a heavily pet-infused diet regimen. And while the majority of the 67 million who saw his rambling ranting of “They’re eating dogs!! They’re eating the cats!!” as what he believed to be the only appropriate response to questions about immigration reform as a political misstep, Loomer led the cacophany of sycophants, albeit fewer, that have him convinced he somehow handily won that point and no longer needs to waste his time on trying to argue with someone as “nasty” as Kamala Harris and her “sorority sister”.
Her influence and access have certainly gotten the attention of her fellow Republicans. As Bensinger noted:
Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina, told a reporter from HuffPost on Thursday that Ms. Loomer “is just really toxic.” The always combative Ms. Loomer responded on X with a post questioning Mr. Graham’s loyalty to Mr. Trump and making a personal attack on Mr. Graham.
On Friday, Thom Tillis, a Republican senator from North Carolina, chimed in on X, calling Ms. Loomer “a crazy conspiracy theorist who regularly utters disgusting garbage intended to divide Republicans.” Soon after that was posted, Ms. Loomer went after Mr. Tillis, too, calling him a “RINO” — for Republican in name only — “who attacked President Trump after Jan. 6.”
But both the most unlikely and perhaps the least surprising reaction came from one of the more veteran members of the MAGA male fantasy world:
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican, wrote on X on Wednesday that Ms. Loomer’s post about curry was “appalling and extremely racist” and said it “does not represent who we are as Republicans or MAGA.” Ms. Loomer, a former ally of Ms. Greene’s who has clashed with her on a number of issues in recent years, responded with a multi-post tirade, accusing Ms. Greene of being “jealous” of her access to Mr. Trump, noting Ms. Greene’s own history of controversial comments, making personal attacks and defending her post about curry.
Loomer’s response, as reported in detail by RADAR ONLINE’s Haley Gunn on Thursday, was one that anyone ghost-writing for Trump could take pride in:
In response to Greene’s condemnation, Loomer launched a multi-post attack against the congresswoman. The far-right activist accused Greene of being “extremely jealous” and “vindictive”.
She wrote: “Once again, @mtgreenee who is extremely jealous and vindictive over the fact that she wasn’t successful in turning Donald Trump against me is now behaving like a leftist and accusing me of being “racist”.
Loomer then turned the tables on Greene and accused her of being racist, saying: “Hey MTG, speaking of racism, one of your former staffers told me you have a favorite word that starts with N.
“What if the staffer has a video? It’s rather ironic that MTG wants to call me a racist when MTG is a full blown ANTI SEMITE who believes that Jewish people use Space lasers to control the world.”
The 31-year-old continued to rip Greene as she accused of being a “poor excuse for a Christian“. She added: “Along with being an anti semite, MTG is also a poor excuse for a Christian. Her marriage failed because she couldn’t keep her legs closed while she was a new member of Congress and was too busy Screwing some guy from her CrossFit.
Had I had not heard the exact same story, with additional details about the CrossFit “friend”‘s side hustle as a tantric sex guru, three years earlier from someone who frequented that Atlanta area gym where they both worked out, I would have likely dismissed Loomer as quickly as so many others have. But because it’s sometimes too small and inconvenient a world to take the easy way out, I grudgingly concede that there may just be a method to her madness.
Trump has consistently proven to be as id-based and juvenile-thinking as any man of any age, and rewards loyalty over anything else. Loomer’s degree of loyalty to Trump has at times been been zealotic; as Bensinger reminded:
One of Ms. Loomer’s early attention-grabbing moments came in 2017, when she interrupted a performance of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” in Central Park in New York because the production gave the doomed emperor a marked resemblance to Mr. Trump. Just after the scene in which Caesar was assassinated, Ms. Loomer jumped onto the stage and shouted: “This is violence against Donald Trump! Stop the normalization of political violence against the right!”
Now add to that the fact that she’s younger, and not exactly unattractive, and Trump, much like so many other rich old men, is ever open to trading in aging models of the vehicles they drive for something faster and newer.
Greene apparently only got as far as the VIP box at Bedminster Golf Course for a nondescript LIV Golf tournament last summer. Loomer got on the plane and into the entourage.
And as Bill Maher mused on his REAL TIME show last night, Loomer may have gotten a lot farther than that. This was a subject THE WRAP’s Rosemary Rossi covered in detail a couple of years ago:
“Who is Donald Trump f—ing? It’s somebody. And it’s not Melania… and it’s not nobody,” Maher said on Friday night’s “Real Time” on HBO. “He’s a dog and always has been.”
You’ll never guess who Maher surmised may be the latest flavor of the month. Then again, if you’ve got the mind of a man, you might.
Confronted yesterday by all of this, Trump did his best to distance himself and perhaps indicate that the Warhol hourglass may be starting to run out on Loomer,as THE DAILY MAIL’s Rob Crilly reported:
Donald Trump claimed to be completely unaware of the growing controversy around conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer as he faced questions about why he had allowed a woman who said 9/11 was an inside job to travel with him for commemoration events this week.
But at a press conference at his Los Angeles golf club in front of the Pacific Ocean on Friday, Trump refused to criticize her.
‘I don’t control Laura,’ he said. ‘I can’t tell Laura what to do. She’s a supporter.’
He shrugged off questions about why she rode on his plane this week to a 9/11 event in Pennsylvania, and the memorial to flight 93.
‘A lot of people do,’ he said. ‘It’s a very big plane.’
Instead he claimed ignorance about her history of controversial remarks. He promised to read up on her comments and issue a statement.
I’m not sure what’s a less truthful statement. The size of his plane, or the promise that he’s going to read.
The fact that Trump faced more questions about this on Friday that anything else that was and wasn’t said at the debate, less than two months away from Decision Day, strongly suggests that, ironically, this “wag the dog” tactic has caused enough distraction and distancing that the degree of impact of Harris’ performance is already showing signs of diminishing. And given that reality, not to mention his own deflection and reluctance to disavow Loomer, I’m in the camp that believes that she’s not necessarily gonna fade into the ether just yet.
Loomer certainly appears to know how to get into the mind, and possibly other parts, of a man. And perhaps Greene may have to resort to some of her more base instincts to keep pace. And let me tell you, since there’s apparently now an open date on the October calendar where a third Trump-Democratic nominee debate will apparently now not take place, a pay-per-view event in, say, a mud pit, might be a welcome alternative.
If not for the price point, I’d watch. And I happen to know a lot of men (and women) who in the privacy of their own homes would absolutely tune in. Even Cosmo Kramer knows the appeal of a catfight. So long as the loser doesn’t become dinner.
Until next time…