0:01

When President Trump fired Timothy

0:03

Hawk, the head of the

0:05

National Security Administration and US

0:07

Cyber Command last week, he

0:09

didn't say why. But Laura

0:11

Loomer, who'd met with Trump

0:13

a day earlier, took credit.

0:15

She said on Twitter that

0:17

Hawk was disloyal to President

0:19

Trump. Laura Loomer, chaos agent,

0:22

activist, proud Islamaphobe, her words,

0:24

influenza, trickster, trespasser. I'm just

0:26

really keeping it. You're on private

0:28

property, so you're trespassing. How? I don't

0:30

know. I'm really confused. Nancy said everyone

0:32

was laughing here. Did you know who

0:34

Nancy Pelosi is? Yes, so. She has

0:37

Trump's ear, maybe even his respect. You

0:39

don't want to be lubered. If you're

0:41

in deep trouble. And she's just getting

0:43

started in Washington. That's ahead

0:45

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2:06

today explained, I'm no well king,

2:08

and some of the best reporting

2:10

I've seen on Laura Loomer comes

2:12

from the Wall Street journals, Vera

2:14

Berra Berra is a national security

2:16

reporter who also covered the online

2:18

right for a time, and so

2:21

she knows her Laura Loomer-Lor. Laura

2:23

Loomer is a far-right internet personality.

2:25

She kind of defies characterization, to

2:27

be honest. I am the most

2:29

censored person. in this country, hands

2:31

down, if not the most censored

2:33

woman in the world. She's only

2:35

31, which seems to surprise a

2:38

lot of people because, you know,

2:40

she's been around for a long

2:42

time, and she's from Arizona and

2:44

kind of has built a whole

2:46

career ever since she graduated from

2:48

college. out of being Donald Trump's,

2:50

you know, hatchet woman on the

2:52

internet and doing these publicity stunts

2:55

and these, you know, these kind

2:57

of shock tactics against anyone she

2:59

thinks is this loyal to President

3:01

Trump. There's a story about Laura

3:03

Luma that I heard a while

3:05

back that I really love. When

3:07

she was in college, she tried

3:09

to start... A chapter supporting ISIS

3:12

on her college campus? An honor

3:14

student at Barry University told instructors

3:16

she wanted to start that group

3:18

to help promote education in the

3:20

Islamic State, but she was working

3:22

undercover for a non-profit. Project Veritas

3:24

alleges the school is sympathetic to

3:26

the terror group ISIS, and they

3:29

argue a secretly recorded video taken

3:31

by a student proves it. Laura

3:33

Loomer is like, she's like a

3:35

prankster. Tell us about some of

3:37

the pranks. Exactly, and it's clear

3:39

she's always been this way. She's

3:41

not someone who necessarily picked it

3:43

up recently once these things became

3:46

popular, right? But she seems to

3:48

be a big fan of, you

3:50

know, Project Veritas, you know, which

3:52

is another kind of right-wing stunned

3:54

outfit, for lack of a better

3:56

word. James O'Keefe with Project Veritas,

3:58

you're on camera here talking about

4:00

giving anal sex. toys and butt

4:03

plugs to little children? Sir, why

4:05

are you running? Why are you

4:07

running away? But she basically loves

4:09

to do these very public things

4:11

that she films on video. For

4:13

example, she tried to vote wearing

4:15

a burka under the name Huva

4:17

Abeden who was Hillary Clinton's aid

4:20

in 2016 to make a point

4:22

about voter fraud. And these things

4:24

always push very much towards offensive

4:26

and towards, you know, just really

4:28

attention calling. Why are you supporting

4:30

the weaponization of government against President

4:32

Trump? My name is Laura Loomer.

4:34

Oh gosh, you're the crazy person,

4:37

I think you're the crazy person

4:39

supporting the weaponization of government against

4:41

Donald Trump. You don't need to

4:43

run for president status, you need

4:45

to get on a treadmill and

4:47

run. You just got looored, bitch.

4:49

She disrupted a production of Julius

4:51

Caesar in 2017 in Central Park.

4:57

She's changed herself to, you

5:00

know, the doors of Twitter's

5:02

headquarters. Because they were trying

5:04

to make, you know, they

5:06

were being satirical about Trump

5:08

and she didn't like that.

5:11

I'm protecting our constitution. I'm

5:13

using my constitutional right of

5:15

free speech and protest to

5:17

protest against the bastardization of

5:20

Shakespeare, really. She's changed herself

5:22

to, you know, the doors

5:24

of Twitter's headquarters. and today

5:26

I'm here at Twitter and

5:29

on this side that's the

5:31

tweet that I was permanently

5:33

banned for. She's appeared a

5:35

politician's homes and all of

5:37

this is just always recorded

5:40

and promoted and posted on

5:42

social media and none of

5:44

us ever quite cohesive it's

5:46

not always necessarily very smart

5:49

but it's very attention calling

5:51

because she's trying to make

5:53

a point. So apparently,

5:55

you know, she was always a huge

5:57

Trump fan and she... at some point

5:59

just must have gotten onto his radar

6:02

as sometimes his very vocal supporters on

6:04

social media do and she seems to

6:06

just have you know over and over

6:08

again tried to you know she bought

6:10

tickets to his golf tournaments she was

6:12

trying to put herself in his orbit

6:14

and I don't think it's actually quite

6:17

clear when they first really met but

6:19

at one point it seemed to work

6:21

when she started appearing next to him

6:23

in the next last couple of years

6:25

So at one point she appeared in

6:27

a video with him at Bedminster at

6:30

his golf course in New Jersey. Hey

6:32

everybody, we're here at Bedminster. I'm with

6:34

the greatest president ever, President Donald Trump.

6:36

And he, you know, does the Trump

6:38

thing where he says, you know, she's

6:40

a great person. Great to have you

6:42

and you've been really very special and

6:45

you work hard. She loves me. She's

6:47

so complementary towards me. You are a

6:49

very opinionated lady. I have to tell

6:51

you that. And in my opinion, I

6:53

like that. And, you know, he seemed

6:55

to be aware that she was pretty

6:58

fringe even for some of the people

7:00

who sometimes tend to be in his

7:02

orbit when it comes to the far

7:04

right. but he still was seemed willing

7:06

to let her in and then she

7:08

increasingly appeared around him during the last

7:11

election. Laura Loomer seems to have a

7:13

thing with President Trump and loyalty. Can

7:15

you just talk a bit about how

7:17

she seems to be pegging people as

7:19

loyal or disloyal to the president and

7:21

how long that's gone on for? So

7:23

that's one of the really interesting things

7:26

about her as a character is that

7:28

she's quite transparent in many ways. She

7:30

on social media she posts these very

7:32

long rounds especially now that you're allowed

7:34

to you know basically go on forever

7:36

and she kind of seems to be

7:39

very stream of consciousness and she will

7:41

just say very bluntly she said this

7:43

again a few days ago she very

7:45

bluntly will say I know better than

7:47

anyone else who is actually loyal to

7:49

President Trump into his agenda and who

7:51

is kind of a poser or who

7:54

is kind of a deep state enemy.

7:56

The thing that I harped on the

7:58

most during the campaign season was, you

8:00

know, the importance of vetting vetting. I

8:02

thought that we were keeping a bind.

8:04

full of receipts. And she says that

8:07

she's vetting these people. And this kind

8:09

of became a thing of hers during

8:11

the last election. She said she was

8:13

vetting, you know, who was the most

8:15

magga of them all, right? You know,

8:17

she was going into their employment histories,

8:19

all of their previous statements, things they

8:22

had liked, people they'd interacted with. As

8:24

far as I can tell, it's basically

8:26

just using Google and Twitter the way

8:28

most of us would do. She doesn't

8:30

seem to be going much deeper. But

8:32

she's kind of refashioned herself as somebody

8:35

who's vetting people around the president and

8:37

warning him if she thinks someone's not

8:39

on his side. And she tends to

8:41

post quote unquote receipts all over the

8:43

internet when she finds these people. The

8:45

provocateur right, which she's a part of,

8:48

is full of... conspiracies and coconuts and

8:50

etc. Where does she fit in? She

8:52

definitely falls on the fringiest of the

8:54

fringe I would say. And you can

8:56

tell because you've had a lot of

8:58

people who themselves have been labeled as

9:00

fringe like Marjorie Taylor Green and some

9:03

others who say that she's crazy and

9:05

who say that you know they are

9:07

kind of on the more conservative end.

9:09

Her rhetoric and her tone is does

9:11

not match the base, does not match

9:13

Maga, does not match my Republican side

9:16

note and I'm completely denouncing it, I'm

9:18

over it and I would encourage anyone

9:20

else that matches her statements to stop.

9:22

And, you know, she said she was

9:24

being unfairly targeted because she was a

9:26

conservative, but because she has this, she

9:28

likes to be kind of offensive and,

9:31

you know, really speak in pretty shocking

9:33

terms about conspiracies, you know, 9-11 was

9:35

an inside job, kind of trading these

9:37

kind of things back and forth, she's,

9:39

you know, she's relegated to the very

9:41

fringes because it's not only things that

9:44

are necessarily related to President Trump, it's

9:46

a particular worldview that she's really not

9:48

shy about putting all over the internet

9:50

putting all over the internet. So

9:54

last week Laura Loomer got herself in audience

9:56

with President Trump, they met at the White

9:58

House, and you... done the kind of tick-talk

10:01

reporting on this, what happened? I think what's

10:03

important to remember is that it would have

10:05

made headlines even if she had just sat

10:07

with him in the Oval Office. That would

10:10

have been shocking enough for a lot of

10:12

people. That someone like her who again is

10:14

pretty toxic even in the far-right circles would

10:16

have made her way into the Oval Office

10:19

and gotten a sit-down with President Trump. But

10:21

on top of that we find out... that

10:23

she walked in with a folder with over

10:25

a dozen people. She said we're, you know,

10:28

part of the administration that weren't loyal enough

10:30

to him, that were somehow, you know, enemies

10:32

to his agenda. And after she walked out,

10:34

some of them were fired. President

10:37

Trump's firing of the head of

10:39

the National Security Agency and U.S.

10:41

Cyber Command has rattled lawmakers and...

10:43

And conspiracy theorist Laura Loomers, thanking

10:45

President Trump for being receptive to

10:47

her report of disloyal people in

10:49

the National Security Agency. The head

10:51

of the NSA and his deputy

10:53

and some other national security officials,

10:55

suddenly were gone. And she has

10:57

taken credit for it. You know,

10:59

she's been saying, you know, pretty

11:01

not suddenly, she's been kind of

11:03

taking credit for having raised these

11:05

people to the President's attention. Yeah,

11:07

she actually went in, I was

11:09

told, to the West Wing with

11:11

a list of around a dozen

11:13

names and urged President Donald Trump

11:15

to fire them. A lot of

11:17

this was more about lawyers. Numerous

11:19

recommendations to Trump go across the

11:21

government, expand across various different government

11:23

agencies, including the State Department and

11:25

intelligence agencies. The White House hasn't

11:27

confirmed that it was directly connected,

11:29

but it seems pretty obvious that

11:31

something happened there. Vera

11:38

Bergen grew in of the Wall Street

11:41

Journal, coming up, who's Laura Loomer's next

11:43

target? And is it you? JK, JK,

11:45

JK. We'll be back in a minute.

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back with Vera Bergen-Grew, and she's

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a national security reporter for the

15:00

Wall Street Journal. So President Trump

15:02

fired several national security officials last

15:04

week, but the firing that got

15:07

the most attention was the head

15:09

of the NSA and of U.S. cyber

15:11

command. So the head of the NSA

15:13

was an Air Force general called Timothy

15:15

Hawk, and he and his deputy were

15:17

not people who were prone to go

15:20

after Trump online or have any public

15:22

statements where they're necessarily opposing him by

15:24

any means. Her problem seems to have

15:26

been that he had been in previous

15:29

administrations and that he was some kind

15:31

of deep state official who was opposing,

15:33

you know, Trump's agenda. We have now

15:35

found ourselves as a part of the

15:37

team that's defending our electoral process

15:39

because of our adversary's intent

15:42

to target it from a cyber

15:44

perspective and information. How we counter

15:46

disinformation together is a national

15:48

effort. And she had kind of flagged

15:51

him on Twitter and called him a

15:53

traitor. As a Biden appointee, General Hawk

15:55

had no place serving in the Trump

15:57

administration, given that he was handpicked. by

16:00

General Millie, who was accused of

16:02

committing treason by President Trump. Why

16:04

would we want an NSA director

16:06

who is referred to Biden after

16:08

being hand-selected by Millie, who told

16:10

China he would side with them

16:13

over Trump? This is part of

16:15

a long-standing suspicion among a lot

16:17

of... Trump's supporters that people within

16:19

the government are working against him

16:21

and trying to make it harder

16:23

for him to get his goals

16:25

done. So these two people, again,

16:28

career officials, not exactly well-known names

16:30

or flashy people, and they were just

16:32

gone after she met with President Trump.

16:34

Someone is running the NSA now, though.

16:36

Yes, they have an acting director now.

16:38

Gotcha. Okay, so the question is, President

16:40

Trump likes people who were loyal

16:43

to him, for sure. But really, one

16:45

wonders how on earth could

16:47

Laura Lumer have enough influence

16:50

to get the president,

16:52

her claim, to fire

16:54

people in his national

16:56

security agency? I'm

16:58

sure there's a lot of people in Trump's

17:01

own inner circle who are wondering that,

17:03

because there's no lack of people who

17:05

are being kind of flagged as people

17:07

who should be fired, right? We had signal

17:09

gauge, we had war chats, we've had

17:12

so many things in the last couple

17:14

of weeks, and it was pretty surprising

17:16

to have someone like Laura Loomer come

17:19

in, and again, apparently have the kind

17:21

of influence to get someone fired who

17:23

wasn't exactly on most people's radar. And

17:26

another thing to remember is that she

17:28

had tried to get hired by the

17:30

Trump campaign. And a lot of people

17:32

around him, including Susie Wiles, who's now

17:35

his chief of staff, you know, people

17:37

in his campaign thought that was a

17:39

really bad idea and made sure to

17:41

freeze her out. And she still seems

17:44

to always warm her way back in

17:46

because Trump likes people like her, who

17:48

are offensive and brash and really

17:50

supportive of him. And so he

17:52

tends to call her, you know,

17:54

a wonderful person. He thinks that his

17:56

base likes her and that she says

17:58

a lot of things. publicly that he

18:01

can say, right? There's a big

18:03

jump between that and, as I said,

18:05

having someone even come into the White

18:07

House and then having the discussion at

18:10

the White House be, you know, who

18:12

should get fired by this 31-year-old's online

18:14

influencer. Does Laura Lumer have

18:17

either an official or unofficial position

18:19

in the Trump White House? Not

18:21

that we know of, but we know that

18:23

she really, really wants one. She's

18:26

been very blunt almost begging I mean,

18:29

it's it's not subtle on Twitter every

18:31

couple of days How badly she wants

18:33

to be quote-unquote vetting people vetting vetting

18:35

vetting and what we do know is

18:38

that she tried to get hired by

18:40

the transition once Trump won the election,

18:42

they were hiring all these people for

18:44

his new administration, and she kind of

18:47

saw her opening and tried to promote

18:49

herself as someone who could be doing

18:51

this quote unquote vetting. And again, she's

18:53

tried to establish this reputation. She also

18:56

called herself a journalist. That's kind

18:58

of important to remember. She tends

19:00

to put a lot of screenshots

19:02

on Twitter. They're all highlighted. I

19:04

use a very non-traditional form of

19:06

journalism in order to raise awareness

19:08

about issues. Gorilla journalism, very aggressive

19:10

in your face. tactics. I, you

19:13

know, certainly don't break the law. Why

19:15

did Laura Lumar set her sights

19:17

on the NSA? If all the agencies

19:19

she could have taken a look at,

19:21

um, Doge is going hard after just

19:23

about everything in Washington, why did she

19:25

pick on the NSA? I mean, everyone

19:27

had thought that when Elon Musk walked

19:29

into the NSA with his doge guys,

19:31

you know, that was game over, there

19:33

was going to be some huge problem,

19:35

mass layoffs, and, you know, they left,

19:38

and nothing major happened. And no one

19:40

could really have imagined that it would

19:42

be Laura Lummer, of all people, this

19:44

person that I'm sure most of them have never

19:46

heard of, who would actually get the head

19:48

of their agency fired. But, you know, it's

19:50

unclear whether she specifically had her sites on

19:52

these sites on these people for any particular

19:55

reason or because they were more high profile.

19:57

you know again it's important to remember just

19:59

the level of distrust that intelligence agencies

20:01

hold, you know, in the imagination

20:03

of the magga faithful as people

20:05

who are working from within the

20:08

government who have all, you know,

20:10

have all this information. And in

20:12

their view, since the first administration,

20:14

we're trying to, you know, work

20:16

against President Trump and there's just

20:18

a lot of distrust when it

20:20

comes to that. The NSA keeps

20:22

a rather low profile. What kinds

20:24

of threats to the country does

20:26

it work on? What's its job?

20:28

So the NSA is in charge

20:31

of just as a broad portfolio,

20:33

it works obviously on cybersecurity, it

20:35

collects a lot of intelligence, foreign

20:37

communications, and it's a national security

20:39

agency that provides all of this

20:41

in order to the president and

20:43

to shares with other agencies in

20:45

order to make national security decisions.

20:47

And, you know, it's been in

20:49

the crosshairs in recent years, you

20:51

know, for collecting information on Americans.

20:53

It's always been kind of seen

20:56

as this potentially creepy eavesdropping agency.

20:58

So, you know, ever since the

21:00

Edward Snowden days. NSA and the

21:02

intelligence community in general is focused

21:04

on getting intelligence wherever it can,

21:06

by any means possible. Now increasingly

21:08

we see that it's happening domestically.

21:10

So, you know, that's probably part

21:12

of the reason that it has

21:14

this association in Americans' minds. But

21:16

again, for the people on President

21:19

Trump, they have so much distrust

21:21

of intelligence agencies, of intelligence officials,

21:23

who they think are, you know,

21:25

spying on the president, trying to

21:27

get him. They were spying on

21:29

President Trump's campaign. Spying on not

21:31

only the President Trump's campaign, looks

21:33

like spying on him during the

21:35

transition period, and potentially even while

21:37

he was... president of the United

21:39

States. Ultimately, it's an agency that's

21:42

responsible for intelligence gathering and sharing

21:44

with foreign allies. And, you know,

21:46

there's really no reason that someone

21:48

like Laura Lumer, again, would know

21:50

whether someone would be a traitor

21:52

to the president, what that would

21:54

look like. Does the firing... these

21:56

officials at the NSA, does it

21:58

leave the United States more vulnerable

22:00

to attacks, to cyber attacks, for

22:02

example? Yes and no. It's not

22:04

an agency that necessarily stops working

22:07

when something like this happens. But

22:09

of course, you know, you remove

22:11

the head of the agency and

22:13

his deputy very abruptly. That's a

22:15

lot of experience and institutional knowledge

22:17

that leaves, but really it's the

22:19

uncertainty that this creates and the,

22:21

again, the... fear in many senses

22:23

that they could be next, that

22:25

this is just a very destabilizing

22:27

move to do. It also raises

22:30

the question of who could be

22:32

bringing other people to someone like

22:34

Loomer's attention, who feels like they

22:36

can push certain people out. There

22:38

could be a lot of, you

22:40

know, there could be other foreign

22:42

adversaries or others who maybe consider

22:44

Loomer a valuable person to raise

22:46

these people to. And just in

22:48

general, the fact that this could

22:50

be enough that... claiming that you

22:52

are not fully loyal to the

22:55

president, and that definition tends to

22:57

vary day by day, is enough

22:59

to push out such a high-level

23:01

agency head, is destabilizing on its

23:03

own, even though the agency, of

23:05

course, will continue doing its job.

23:07

Vera, you're kind of the perfect

23:09

person to talk to on this

23:11

story, because you are a national

23:13

security reporter, but you also spent

23:15

many years looking into right-wing figures

23:18

on the internet, including Laura Loomar,

23:20

which means you didn't just learn

23:22

about her last week, like many

23:24

people, like many people. Now that

23:26

she has pulled this off, this

23:28

is an enormous thing that Laura

23:30

Loomer has managed to do. Do

23:32

we know anything about what she

23:34

will ask President Trump to do

23:36

next, or who she might target

23:38

next? She seems to have set

23:41

her sights on Earl Matthews next,

23:43

whose Trump's nominee to be the

23:45

Pentagon's top lawyer. And she seems

23:47

to be taking issue with the

23:49

fact that he was responsible, or

23:51

she says he was responsible, for

23:53

getting hexets blocked from working at

23:55

Biden's inauguration because of some tattoos

23:57

he has, which are... tied to

23:59

extremist movements and apparently they saw

24:01

them they told him he couldn't

24:03

work the inauguration because at that

24:06

time they were being very careful

24:08

with anyone associated with extremist symbols

24:10

but she seems to have taken

24:12

real issue with him and whereas

24:14

in the past she used to

24:16

go after people every single day

24:18

on Twitter and no one seemed

24:20

to pay attention now everyone's really

24:22

worried whenever she brings anyone up.

24:28

The other noteworthy thing is that unlike

24:30

the other people who Laura Loomer basically

24:33

got fired, who haven't said anything, Earl

24:35

Matthews posted a long response on Twitter,

24:37

where he kind of seemed to imply

24:39

that somebody was putting her up to

24:41

this. He said, you know, you have

24:43

to ask yourself, who benefits from this?

24:45

It's clear she thinks that this is

24:47

working, and she has started her own

24:49

vetting agency, that those are her words,

24:51

called Loomard Strategies. And, you know, she

24:53

set up a Twitter account, which didn't

24:55

really have almost any followers before the

24:57

NSA news, which now seems to have

25:00

gotten quite a bit of pickup. We

25:02

don't really know who her clients are,

25:04

but she has a pretty prominent endorsement

25:06

from President Trump himself, who says, If

25:08

you're alone or you're in deep trouble,

25:10

that's the end of your career, in

25:12

a sense. As if that's, you know,

25:14

a verb, and it's something that you

25:16

can do, which basically means investigating someone

25:18

and getting them fired from their job.

25:20

that a lot more people in Washington

25:22

are going to be very closely watching

25:25

Laura Luma's Twitter feed to see who

25:27

she mentions next because they don't want

25:29

to be on the end of that

25:31

and it's clear that she's got the

25:33

power to get people fired or get

25:35

their nominations scuttled and I think we're

25:37

going to be seeing a lot more

25:39

of that. Vera

25:46

Bergen-Grewin is a national security reporter for the Wall

25:48

Street Journal, W.S.J.com. Gabrielle Burbay and Victoria Chamberlain produced

25:51

today's show, Miranda Kennedy edited, Andrei Kristen's daughter and

25:53

Patrick Boyd engineered, and Amanda Lou Ellen checked the

25:55

facts. The rest of us, Hadi

25:57

Muagdi, Peter Balanon, Rosen, Miles Bryan, Avashire-Arci, Jolie

25:59

Myers, Devin Schwartz, Sean Ramos, Carla Amina

26:01

El Amin and Laura Bullard. Today,

26:03

Explained is distributed by

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