'Can’t Tell Laura What To Do': Trump Defends 'Conspiracy Theorist' Amid Row Over Racist Remarks Against Harris

Donald Trump has defended his ties with Laura Loomer, who has drawn criticism from some of his Republican allies for embracing conspiracy theories and making racist comments about US Vice President Kamala Harris.

“Laura has been a supporter of mine. Just like a lot of people are supporters, and she’s been a supporter of mine. She speaks very positively of the campaign,” Trump, the former president, said on Friday at a news conference in California. He was responding to a question from a reporter about his allies expressing concern about his close ties with Loomer.

‘Laura — she’s a free spirit’

“I don’t control Laura. Laura — she’s a free spirit. Well, I don’t know. I mean, look, I can’t tell Laura what to do,” Trump said. “She is a strong person, she’s got strong opinions, and I don’t know what she said, but that’s not up to me,” he added. Several of Loomer’s posts on social media this week came under fire, including one where she nodded to a conspiracy theory about the 9/11 attacks.

“23 years later, and there’s still a lot of unanswered questions,” Loomer posted on Friday, alongside a video of Trump in 2001 questioning whether airplanes could cause explosions like the ones that happened at the Twin Towers on 9/11,” Loomer wrote. After her post was picked up by several news outlets, Loomer, in a subsequent post, defended herself saying, “I am not a 9/11 truther. This is the tweet I posted about 9/11 last year that the media is going crazy over. In fact, in my book, there’s an entire section about 9/11 in which I talk about how it was carried out by Islamic terrorists.”

Conspiracy theories

Loomer, often seen as a right-wing conspiracy theorist, in another post on Sunday, said the ”White House will smell like curry & White House speeches will be facilitated via a call centre” if Harris wins the November 5 presidential election. Harris, a Democrat, will take on Trump in the November election. NBC News asked Trump whether he’d been informed of Loomer’s conspiracy theories. “I don’t know that much about it. No, I don’t,” he said, adding, “I know she’s a big fan of the campaign, but I really don’t know.”

Trump later sought to distance himself from Loomer’s statements, though without specifying which ones. In a Truth Social post, Trump said that Loomer ”doesn’t work for the Campaign. She’s a private citizen and longtime supporter. ” Even in that post, Trump defended Loomer and said: “Like the many millions of people who support me, she is tired of watching the Radical Left Marxists and Fascists violently attack and smear me.” Several Republicans denounced Loomer for her remarks.

‘I exposed lawfare against Trump’

In her defence, Loomer claimed that Democrats “are angry because I exposed the lawfare against Donald Trump.” “I have done some serious damage to her campaign, and so clearly there is a coordinated effort by the media, Kamala Harris, Fani Willis, probably judge Merchan and his daughters’ company, and some RINO members of Congress to attack me because they don’t like how effective I am,” she wrote on X.

“They have devoted three whole days of nonstop media coverage to me on every single news network. I have received over 875 phone calls from reporters. I am getting death threats, And all I did was say “the White House was going to smell like curry” because Kamala spends more time cooking than talking policy. It’s a bit overblow!That is why they are attacking me,” she added.