Laura Loomered the NSA

Speaker 1 When President Trump fired Timothy Hawk, the head of the National Security Administration and U.S. Cyber Command last week, he didn't say why.

Speaker 1 But Laura Loomer, who'd met with Trump a day earlier, took credit. She said on Twitter that Hawk was disloyal to President Trump.

Speaker 1 Laura Loomer, chaos agent, activist, proud Islamophobe, her words, influencer, trickster, trespasser.

Speaker 4 I'm just really dude. You're on private property, so you're trespassing.

Speaker 3 How? I don't know. I'm really confused.
Nancy said everyone was welcome here.

Speaker 4 Do you know who Nancy Polars is?

Speaker 5 Yes, sir.

Speaker 1 So, Nancy. She has Trump's ear, maybe even his respect.

Speaker 3 You don't want to be lumered.

Speaker 6 If you're lumered, you're in deep trouble.

Speaker 1 And she's just getting started in Washington. That's ahead on Today Explained.

Speaker 8 Every story you love,

Speaker 9 every invention that moves you,

Speaker 9 every idea you wished was yours, all began as nothing.

Speaker 8 Just a blank page with a blinking cursor,

Speaker 8 asking a simple question:

Speaker 10 What do you see?

Speaker 8 Great ideas start on Mac.

Speaker 9 Find out more on apple.com/slash Mac

Speaker 11 With a Spark Cash Plus card from Capital One, you earn unlimited 2% cash back on every purchase. And you get big purchasing power so your business can spend more and earn more.

Speaker 11 Capital One, what's in your wallet? Find out more at capital1.com/slash Spark Cash Plus. Terms apply.

Speaker 1 It's Today Explained. I'm Noel King, and some of the best reporting I've seen on Laura Loomer comes from the Wall Street Journal's Vera Bergengruen.

Speaker 1 Vera is a national security reporter who also covered the online right for a time. And so she knows her Laura Loomer lore.

Speaker 6 Laura Loomer is a far-right internet personality. She kind of defies characterization, to be honest.

Speaker 13 I am the most censored person in this country, hands down, if not the most censored woman in the world.

Speaker 6 She's only 31, which seems to surprise a lot of people because, you know, she's been around for a long time.

Speaker 6 And she's from Arizona and kind of has built a whole career ever since she graduated from college out of being Donald Trump's, you know, hatchet woman on the internet and doing these publicity stunts and these, you know, these kind of shock tactics against anyone she thinks is disloyal to President Trump.

Speaker 1 There's a story about Laura Loomer that I heard heard a while back that I really love. When she was in college, she tried to start a chapter supporting ISIS on her college campus.

Speaker 15 An honors student at Barrie University told instructors she wanted to start that group to help promote education in the Islamic State, but she was working undercover for a nonprofit.

Speaker 16 Project Veritas alleges the school is sympathetic to the terror group ISIS. And they argue a secretly recorded video taken by a student proves it.

Speaker 1 Laura Loomer is like, she's like a prankster. Tell us about some of the pranks.

Speaker 6 Exactly. And it's clear she's always been this way.
She's not someone who necessarily picked it up recently from once these things became popular, right?

Speaker 6 But she seems to be a big fan of, you know, Project Veritas, you know, which is another kind of right-wing stunt outfit, for lack of a better word.

Speaker 17 James O'Keefe with Project Veritas. You're on camera here talking about giving anal sex toys and butt plugs to little children.
Sir, why are you running? Why are you running away?

Speaker 6 But she basically loves to do these very public things that she films on video. For example,

Speaker 6 she tried to vote wearing a burqa under the name Huba Abadin, who was Hillary Clinton's aide in 2016 to make a point about voter fraud.

Speaker 6 And these things always push very much towards offensive and towards, you know, just really attention calling.

Speaker 18 Why are you supporting the weaponization of government against President Trump? I am Flora Lumer. Oh, gosh, you're the crazy person.

Speaker 18 I'm the crazy person. I think you're the crazy person supporting the weaponization of government against Donald Trump.

Speaker 18 You don't need to run for president, sadass. You need to get out of treadmill and run.

Speaker 19 You just got lured, bitch.

Speaker 6 She disrupted a production of Julius Caesar in 2017 in Central Park.

Speaker 20 Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to pause.

Speaker 12 We're going to pause security.

Speaker 6 Because they were trying to make, yeah, they were being satirical about Trump, and she didn't like that.

Speaker 21 I'm protecting our Constitution. I'm using my constitutional right of free speech and protest to protest against the bastardization of Shakespeare, really.

Speaker 6 She's chained herself to,

Speaker 6 you know, the doors of Twitter's headquarters.

Speaker 5 My name is Laura Loomer. I'm a conservative investigative journalist.
And today I'm here. at Twitter and on this side, that's the tweet that I was permanently banned for.

Speaker 6 She's appeared at politicians' homes, and all of this is just always recorded and promoted and posted on social media. And none of it's ever quite cohesive.

Speaker 6 It's not always necessarily very smart, but it's very attention-calling because she knows she's trying to make a point.

Speaker 1 How did Laura Loomer and President Trump actually meet?

Speaker 6 So apparently, you know, she was always a huge Trump fan, and she at some point just must have gotten onto his radar, as sometimes his very vocal supporters on social media do.

Speaker 6 And she seems to just have, you know, over and over again tried to, you know, she bought tickets to his golf tournaments. She was trying to put herself in his orbit.

Speaker 6 And I don't think it's actually quite clear when they first really met. But at one point, it seemed to work when she started appearing next to him in the next last couple of years.

Speaker 6 So at one point, she appeared in a video with him at Bedminster, at his golf course in New Jersey.

Speaker 13 Hey, everybody, we're here at Bedminster.

Speaker 22 I'm with the greatest president ever, President Donald Trump.

Speaker 6 And he, you know, does that Trump thing where he says, you know, she's a great person.

Speaker 22 Great to have you, and you've been really very special. You work hard.

Speaker 6 She loves me. She's so complimentary towards me.

Speaker 22 And you are a very opinionated lady, I have to tell you that. And in my opinion, I like that.

Speaker 6 And, you know, he seemed to be aware that she was pretty fringe, even for some of the people who sometimes tend to be in his orbit when it comes to the far right.

Speaker 6 But he still seemed willing to let her in. And then she increasingly appeared around him during the last election.

Speaker 1 Laura Loomer seems to have a thing with President Trump and loyalty. Can you just talk a bit about

Speaker 1 how she seems to be pegging people as loyal or disloyal to the president and how long that's gone on for?

Speaker 6 So that's one of the really interesting things about her as a character is that she's quite transparent in many ways.

Speaker 6 On social media, she posts these very long rants, especially now that you're allowed to, you know, basically go on forever. And she kind of seems to be very stream of consciousness.

Speaker 6 And she will just say very bluntly, she said this again a few days ago.

Speaker 6 She very bluntly will say, I know better than anyone else who is actually loyal to President Trump and to his agenda and who is kind of a poser or who is kind of a deep state enemy.

Speaker 23 The thing that I harped on the most during the campaign season was, you know, the importance of vetting, vetting, vetting. I thought that we were cheap in a binder full of receipts.

Speaker 6 And she says that she's vetting these people. And this kind of became a thing of hers during the last election.
She said she was vetting, you know, who was the most MAGA of them all, right?

Speaker 6 You know, she was going into their employment histories, all of their previous statements, things they had liked, people they'd interacted with.

Speaker 6 As far as I can tell, it's basically just using Google and Twitter the way most of us would do. She doesn't seem to be going much deeper.

Speaker 6 But she's kind of refashioned herself as somebody who's vetting people around the president and warning him if she thinks someone's, you know, not on his side. And she tends to

Speaker 6 post quote-unquote receipts all over the internet when she finds these people.

Speaker 1 The provocateur right, which she's a part of, is full of

Speaker 1 conspiracists and coconuts and et cetera. Where does she fit in?

Speaker 6 She definitely falls on the fringiest of the fringe, I would say.

Speaker 6 And you can tell because you've had a lot of people who themselves have been labeled as fringe, like Marjorie Taylor Greene and some others who say that she's crazy and who say that, you know, they are kind of on on the more conservative end.

Speaker 24 Her rhetoric and her tone

Speaker 24 does not match the base, does not match MAGA, does not match Mus Republicans, I know. And I am completely denouncing it.
I'm over it.

Speaker 24 And I would encourage anyone else that matches her statements to stop.

Speaker 6 And, you know, she said she was being unfairly targeted because she was a conservative. But because she has this,

Speaker 6 she likes to be kind of offensive and, you know, really speak in pretty shocking terms about conspiracies,

Speaker 6 9-11 was an inside job, kind of trading these kind of things back and forth.

Speaker 6 She's relegated to the very fringes because it's not only things that are necessarily related to President Trump, it's a particular worldview that she's really not shy about putting all over the internet.

Speaker 1 So last week, Laura Loomer got herself an audience with President Trump. They met at the White House.
And

Speaker 1 you've done the kind of TikTok reporting on this. What happened?

Speaker 6 I think what's important to remember is that it would have made headlines even if she had just sat with him in the Oval Office. That would have been shocking enough for a lot of people.

Speaker 6 That someone like her, who again is pretty toxic, even in the far-right circles, would have made her way into the Oval Office and gotten a sit-down with President Trump.

Speaker 6 But on top of that, we find out...

Speaker 6 that she walked in with a folder with over a dozen people she said were you know part of the administration that weren't loyal enough to him that were somehow you know enemies to his agenda and after she walked out

Speaker 6 some of them were fired.

Speaker 2 President Trump's firing of the head of the National Security Agency and U.S.

Speaker 25 Cyber Command has rattled lawmakers and conspiracy theorist Laura Loomers thanking President Trump for being receptive to her report of disloyal people in the National Security Agency.

Speaker 6 The head of the NSA and his deputy and some other national security officials suddenly were gone. And she has taken credit for it.

Speaker 6 You know, she's been saying, you know, pretty not subtly, she's been kind of taking credit for having raised these people to the president's attention.

Speaker 20 Yeah, she actually went in, I was told, to the West Wing with a list of around a dozen names and urged President Donald Trump to fire them.

Speaker 26 A lot of this was more about rumors recommendations to Trump go across the government, expand across various different government agencies, including the State Department and intelligence agencies.

Speaker 6 The White House hasn't confirmed that it was directly connected, but it seems pretty obvious that something happened there.

Speaker 1 Vera Bergengruen of The Wall Street Journal coming up. Who's Laura Loomer's next target? And is it you? JKJK JK.
We'll be back in a minute.

Speaker 8 Every story you love,

Speaker 9 every invention that moves you,

Speaker 9 every idea you wished was yours, all began as nothing.

Speaker 8 Just a blank page with a blinking cursor.

Speaker 8 Asking a simple question,

Speaker 10 what do you see?

Speaker 8 Great ideas start on Mac.

Speaker 9 Find out more on apple.com slash Mac.

Speaker 19 Support for J Explain comes from AT ⁇ T. There's nothing worse worse than needing to make a call and realizing you can't connect, says ATT.

Speaker 19 And of course, every wireless provider will claim that they're the best, but ATT says ATT has the goods to back it up. According to Root Metrics, ATT earned the best overall network performance.

Speaker 19 While the other guys are busy making claims they can't keep, ATT says they're making connections on America's fastest and most reliable wireless network.

Speaker 19 No matter if you're at a concert, a huge sporting event, or just out enjoying nature, you can post when you want to post. Don't Don't post when you're enjoying nature, guys.
Keep it in control.

Speaker 19 Call when you want to call, and rest easy knowing that no matter where you go, ATT has got you covered. When you compare, there's no comparison.
ATT.

Speaker 19 Based on Root Metrics United States Route Score Report 1H2025 tested with best commercially available smartphones, smartphones on three national mobile networks across all available network types, your experiences may vary.

Speaker 19 Root Metrics rankings are not an endorsement of of AT ⁇ T.

Speaker 19 Support for today's show comes from Upwork. You're the CEO of your business and the CFO and customer service.
That's a small business. Maybe you need some support.

Speaker 19 Upwork says that with Upwork Business Plus, they can bring you support in the form of top quality freelancers and fast.

Speaker 19 Instant access to the top 1% of talent on Upwork in fields such as marketing, design, AI, so much much more.

Speaker 19 Upwork says that when you use Upwork Business Plus, you can source and vet candidates for skill and reliability.

Speaker 19 They can also send you a curated shortlist of proven expert talent so that you can delegate with confidence. Don't spin your wheels.

Speaker 19 Right now, when you spend $1,000 on Upwork Business Plus, you'll get $500 in credit. Go to upwork.com/slash save now.
You can claim this offer before December 31, 2025.

Speaker 19 And again, that's upwork.com/slash S-A-V-E.

Speaker 19 Scale smarter with top talent and $500 in credit. Terms and conditions to apply.

Speaker 12 You're listening to Today Explained.

Speaker 1 We're back with Vera Bergen-Gruen. She's a national security reporter for the Wall Street Journal.

Speaker 1 So President Trump fired several national security officials last week, but the firing that got the most attention was the head of the NSA and of U.S. Cyber Command.

Speaker 12 So the head of the NSA was an Air Force general called Timothy Hawk.

Speaker 12 And he and his deputy were not people who were prone to go after Trump online or have any public statements where they're necessarily opposing him by any means.

Speaker 12 Her problem seems to have been that he had been in previous administrations and that he was some kind of deep state official who was opposing Trump's agenda.

Speaker 15 We have now found ourselves as a part of the team that's defending our electoral process because of our adversary's intent to target it from a cyber perspective and information.

Speaker 15 How we counter disinformation together is a national effort.

Speaker 12 And she had kind of flacked him on Twitter and called him a traitor.

Speaker 28 As a Biden appointee, General Hawke had no place serving in the Trump administration given that he was hand-picked by General Milley, who was accused of committing treason by President Trump.

Speaker 28 Why would we want an NSA director who is referred to Biden after being hand-selected by Millie, who told China he would side with them over Trump?

Speaker 12 This is part of a long-standing suspicion among

Speaker 12 a lot of Trump's supporters that people within the government are working against him and trying to make it harder for him to get his goals done.

Speaker 12 So these two people, again, career officials, not exactly well-known names or flashy people, and they were just gone after she met with President Trump.

Speaker 1 Someone is running the NSA now, though.

Speaker 12 Yeah. Yes, they have an acting director now.

Speaker 1 Gotcha. Okay, so the question is,

Speaker 1 President Trump likes people who are loyal to him, for sure.

Speaker 1 But really, one wonders, how on earth could Laura Loomer have enough influence

Speaker 1 to get the president, her claim, to fire people in his national security agency?

Speaker 12 I'm sure there's a lot of people in Trump's own inner circle who are wondering that, because there's no lack of people who are being kind of flagged as people who should be fired, right?

Speaker 12 We had SignalGate, we had war chats, we've had so many things in the last couple of weeks.

Speaker 12 And it was pretty surprising to have someone like Laura Loomer come in and, again, apparently have the kind of influence to get someone fired who wasn't exactly on most people's radar.

Speaker 12 And another thing to remember is that she had tried to get hired by the Trump campaign.

Speaker 12 And a lot of people around him, including Susie Wiles, who's now his chief of staff, you know, people in his campaign thought that was a really bad idea and made sure to freeze her out.

Speaker 12 And she still seems to always worm her way back in because Trump likes people like her. Trump likes people who are offensive and brash and really supportive of him.

Speaker 12 And so he tends to call her, you know, a wonderful person. Laura, how are you? You look so beautiful, as always.

Speaker 12 He thinks that his base likes her and that she says a lot of things publicly that he can say, right?

Speaker 12 There's a big jump between that and, as I said, having someone even come into the White House and then having the discussion at the White House be, you know, who should get fired by this 31-year-old online influencer.

Speaker 1 Does Laura Loomer have either an official or unofficial position in the Trump White House?

Speaker 12 Not that we know of, but we know that she really, really wants one.

Speaker 12 She's been very blunt, almost begging. I mean, it's not subtle.
On Twitter, every couple of days, how badly she wants to be quote unquote vetting people.

Speaker 23 Vetting, vetting, vetting.

Speaker 12 And what we do know is that she tried to get hired by the transition. Once Trump won the election, they were hiring all these people for his new administration.

Speaker 12 And she kind of saw her opening and tried to promote herself as someone who could be doing this quote unquote vetting. And again, she's tried to establish this reputation.

Speaker 12 She also calls herself a journalist. That's kind of important to remember.
She tends to put a lot of screenshots on Twitter. They're all highlighted.

Speaker 14 I use a very non-traditional form of journalism in order to raise awareness about issues, guerrilla journalism, very aggressive in-your-face tactics. I, you know, certainly don't break the law.

Speaker 1 Why did Laura Loomer set her sights on the NSA? Of all the agencies she could have taken a look at, Doge is going hard after just about everything in Washington. Why did she pick on the NSA?

Speaker 12 I mean, everyone had thought that when Elon Musk walked into the NSA with his Doge guys, you know, that was game over. There was going to be some huge problem, mass layoffs.

Speaker 12 And, you know, they left and nothing major happened.

Speaker 12 And no one could really have imagined that it would be Laura Loomer, of all people, this person that I'm sure most of them have never heard of, who would actually get the head of their agency fired.

Speaker 12 But, you know, it's unclear whether she specifically had her sights on these people for any particular reason or because they were more high profile.

Speaker 12 You know, again, it's important to remember just the level of distrust that intelligence agencies

Speaker 12 hold, you know, in the imagination of the MAGA faithful as people who are working from within the government, who have all, you know, have all this information.

Speaker 12 And in their view, since the first administration, we're trying to, you know, work against President Trump. And there's just a lot of distrust when it comes to that.

Speaker 1 The NSA keeps a rather low profile. What kinds of threats to the country does it work on? What's its job?

Speaker 12 So the NSA is in charge of just as a broad portfolio. It works obviously on cybersecurity.
It collects a lot of intelligence, foreign communications.

Speaker 12 And it's a national security agency that provides all of this in order to, you know, to the president and to shares with other agencies in order to make national security decisions.

Speaker 12 And, you know, it's been in the crosshairs in recent years, you know, for collecting information on Americans. It's always been kind of seen as this potentially creepy, eavesdropping agency.

Speaker 12 So, you know, ever since the Edward Snowden days.

Speaker 4 NSA and the intelligence community in general is focused on getting intelligence wherever it can, by any means possible. Now, Now increasingly, we see that it's happening domestically.

Speaker 12 So, you know,

Speaker 12 that's probably part of the reason that it has this association in Americans' minds. But again,

Speaker 12 the people around President Trump, they have so much distrust of intelligence agencies, of intelligence officials who they think are, you know, spying on the president, trying to get him.

Speaker 29 They were spying on President Trump's campaign.

Speaker 29 Spying on not only the President Trump's campaign, looks like spying on him during the transition period and potentially even while he was President of the United States.

Speaker 12 Ultimately, it's an agency that's responsible for intelligence gathering and sharing with foreign allies.

Speaker 12 And, you know, there's really no reason that someone like Laura Loomer, again, would know whether someone would be a traitor to the president, what that would look like.

Speaker 1 Does the firing of these officials at the NSA, does it leave the United States more vulnerable to attacks, to cyber attacks, for example?

Speaker 12 Yes and no. It's not an agency that necessarily stops working when something like this happens.
But of course, you know, you remove the head of the agency and his deputy very abruptly.

Speaker 12 That's a lot of experience and institutional knowledge that leaves. But really, it's the uncertainty that this creates.
And again,

Speaker 12 the fear in many senses that they could be next, that

Speaker 12 this is just a very destabilizing move to do. It also raises the question of who could be bringing other people to someone like Loomer's attention, who feels like they can push certain people out.

Speaker 12 There could be a lot of, there could be either foreign adversaries or others who maybe consider Loomer a valuable person to raise these people to.

Speaker 12 And just in general, the fact that this could be enough that claiming that you are not fully loyal to the president, and that definition tends to vary day by day, is enough to push out such a high-level agency head is destabilizing on its own, even though the agency, of course, will continue doing its job.

Speaker 1 Vera, you're kind of the perfect person to talk to on this story because you are a national security reporter, but you also spent many years looking into right-wing figures on the internet, including Laura Loomer, which means you didn't just learn about her last week, like many people.

Speaker 1 Now that she has pulled this off, this is an enormous thing that Laura Loomer has managed to do. Do we know anything about what she will ask President Trump to do next or who

Speaker 1 she might target next?

Speaker 12 She seems to have set her sights on Earl Matthews next, who's Trump's nominee to be the Pentagon's top lawyer.

Speaker 12 And she seems to be taking issue with the fact that he was responsible, or she says he was responsible, for getting Hexeth blocked from working at Biden's inauguration because of some tattoos he has, which are tied to extremist movements.

Speaker 12 And apparently, they saw them. They told him he couldn't work the inauguration because at that time they were being very careful with anyone associated with extremist symbols.

Speaker 12 But she seems to have taken real issue with him. And whereas in the past, she used to go after people every single day on Twitter and no one seemed to pay attention.

Speaker 12 Now everyone's really worried whenever she brings anyone up.

Speaker 12 The other noteworthy thing is that unlike the other people who Laura Loomer basically got fired who haven't said anything, Earl Matthews posted a long response on Twitter where he kind of seemed to imply that somebody was putting her up to this he said you know you have to ask yourself who benefits from this it's clear she thinks that this is working and she has started her own vetting agency that those are her words called lumered strategies and you know she set up a Twitter account which didn't really have almost any followers before the NSA news which now seems to have gotten quite a bit of pickup we don't really know who her clients are but she has a pretty prominent endorsement from President Trump himself who says, If you're the Loomer, you're in deep trouble.

Speaker 6 That's the end of your career, in a sense.

Speaker 12 As if that's a you know a verb and it's something that you can do, which basically means investigating someone and getting them fired from their job.

Speaker 12 What I think it's pretty clear that a lot more people in Washington are going to be very closely watching Laura Luma's Twitter feed to see who she mentions next because they don't want to be on the end of that.

Speaker 12 And it's clear that she's got the power to get people fired or get their nominations scuttled. And I think we're going to be seeing a lot more of that.

Speaker 1 Vera Bergen-Gruen is a national security reporter for The Wall Street Journal, WSJ.com. Gabrielle Berbay and Victoria Chamberlain produced today's show.
Miranda Kennedy Edited.

Speaker 1 Andre Kristen's daughter and Patrick Boyd engineered. And Amanda Llewellyn checked the facts.

Speaker 1 The rest of us: Hadi Muagdi, Peter Ballinon, Rosen, Miles Bryan, Avshai Artsy, Jolie Myers, Devin Schwartz, Sean Ramasfirm, Carla Javier, Amana El Sadi, and Laura Bullard.

Speaker 1 Today Explained is distributed by WNYC. The show is a part of Vox.
You can support our journalism by joining our membership program today. In this economy, yeah, if you can.
It's optional.

Speaker 1 Go to Vox.com/slash members to sign up. I'm Noel King.
It's Today Explained.

Speaker 7 Time.

Speaker 30 It's always vanishing. The commute, the errands, the work functions, the meetings, selling your car?

Speaker 30 Unless you sell your car with Carvana. Get a real offer in minutes.
Get it picked up from your door.

Speaker 19 Get paid on the spot.

Speaker 7 So fast you'll wonder what it catches.

Speaker 9 There isn't one.

Speaker 30 We just respect you and your time. Oh, you're still here.

Speaker 7 Move along now. Enjoy your day.

Speaker 30 Sell your car today.

Speaker 7 Carvana.

Speaker 30 Pickup fees may apply.

Speaker 27 Support for this show comes from Capital One. With the VentureX Business Card from Capital One, you earn unlimited double miles on every purchase.

Speaker 27 Plus, the VentureX Business Card has no preset spending limit. So your purchasing power can adapt to meet your business needs.

Speaker 9 Capital One.

Speaker 27 What's in your wallet?