Donald Trump and Loomer Tunes - WSJ Editorial

Donald Trump likes to call his political opponents nuts, as in “crazy Nancy Pelosi,” so then why is he hanging with the 9/11 conspiracist Laura Loomer? Is he trying to lose the election? We can’t believe we have to write this about a presidential candidate, but then Mr. Trump seems to like the company of Ms. Loomer, the 31-year-old online provocateur. She was backstage with the Trump team during this week’s debate with Kamala Harris and was in the spin room with the former President afterward.

She then flew on Mr. Trump’s plane to the anniversary memorials of 9/11 in New York City and the site of the Flight 93 crash in Pennsylvania. Her attendance at these events was especially insulting since Ms. Loomer has claimed that 9/11 was “an inside job.” Does she think Osama bin Laden was a CIA front man?

Ms. Loomer is usually described in the press as “far right,” but that’s unfair to the fever swamps. On Sunday she posted on X that if Ms. Harris wins the election, “the White House will smell like curry,” a gibe against Ms. Harris’s Indian heritage. She added that Ms. Harris’s speeches “will be facilitated via a call center.” U.S. companies often farm out their information lines to Indian firms, get it? We wonder if JD Vance’s Indian-American wife thinks that’s funny.

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The problem here is deeper than Mr. Trump’s electoral prospects. A growing segment of the American right is populated by, and susceptible to, cranks and conspiracists. A movement that used to admire William F. Buckley Jr. and Thomas Sowell now elevates a pseudo-historian who blames Winston Churchill for World War II and media personalities who sell falsehoods as a triumph for free speech. This isn’t an intellectual or political movement that is going to win converts, nor will it deserve them.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/donald-trump-laura-loomer-conspiracist-2024-campaign-54e13cf8?st=SbWjDM&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

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