Laura Loomer was the toast of the Trumpian right during her long-shot 2020 congressional race in Florida.
She received a shout-out from then-President Donald Trump. She campaigned with the President’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump. And she earned support from Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Roger Stone, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who was then a candidate for Congress.
Now, we know she was also a self-professed supporter of white nationalism.
“Someone asked me ‘Are you pro-white nationalism?’ Yes. I’m pro-white nationalism,” Loomer said in a December 2017 interview dug up on Sunday by the blog Angry White Men.
Within three years of that interview, Loomer was the 2020 Republican nominee for Florida’s 21st Congressional District.
Loomer’s long history of open bigotry was no secret during the 2020 campaign: She’d long labeled herself a “proud Islamophobe” and was banned from using Uber and Lyft in November 2017 after calling for “a non Islamic form of Uber or Lyft because I never want to support another Islamic immigrant driver.” She was booted from Twitter after asserting that Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) was “anti Jewish” and supported female genital mutilation.
But the interview unearthed Sunday, recorded on the “Nationalist Public Radio” podcast in 2017, further documents Loomer’s involvement with the racist right.
In it, Loomer justified her support for white nationalism by citing Israel.
“I’m a Jew, and I’m pro-Israel, and I would be a hypocrite if I were to say that I was against ethnonationalism, because Israel is an ethnostate,” Loomer said. “And it’s a great country. It’s a great place. I totally support ethnonationalism.”
She added separately that Palestinians are “not legitimate people” and that she opposed Muslims and Jews “mixing,” including through marriage.
“I’m not really a big fan of this idea that we need to coexist, because you can’t really coexist with people who want to kill you,” Loomer said.
Loomer distinguished in the interview between white nationalism and white supremacy, and criticized the white nationalist leaders Richard Spencer and James Allsup because, she said, they gave off a “very cringey, anti-semitic white supremacist vibe.”
She said in the interview that “this country, really, was built as a white, Judeo-Christian ethnostate, essentially. Over time, immigration, and all these calls for diversity, it’s starting to destroy this country. I don’t oppose people who say that they want to have their own ethnostate.”
Loomer also attacked “open borders” policies during the interview, but hedged near the end of her appearance, saying that she was not advocating for “everybody to be excommunicated, right, like, ‘everyone go here, all the Jews go to Israel.'”
“That’s not what I’m advocating for, what I’m saying is people have a right to openly express these opinions and these policies, and desire these policies, without being labeled as a racist or a bigot, or having to fear for being fired or ostracized in their own community.”
“I’m not advocating for this, at the moment, I’m not saying ‘kick everyone besides white people out of Europe,’” she said. “What I’m saying is, people should be able to have these political opinions and openly share them without being ostracized or fired like a lot of people have been.”
Loomer recently announced that she would be running for Congress again in 2022. (In 2020, she ultimately lost to incumbent Democrat Lois Frankel by 20 points.)
Greene, who on Feb. 25 announced her endorsement of Loomer and called her a friend, didn’t care to comment Monday on Loomer’s self-professed support for white nationalism.
Rather, she was upset that TPM asked about Loomer’s comments in the first place.
“Stop your anti-Semitic attacks on Laura Loomer,” the congresswoman said in a statement, shared with TPM by her spokesperson, Nick Dyer.
None of the other high-profile politicians who supported Loomer in 2020 responded to TPM’s requests for comment Monday.
