Tina Nguyen is a Senior Reporter for The Verge, covering the second Trump administration, political influencers, tech lobbying and Big Tech vs. Big Government.
For all the power she wields with the White House’s affairs, Laura Loomer does not have the traditional tools that her rivals in the MAGA influencer industrial complex have — the highest follower count, the most political power, the most internet platforms, etc. But the fact remains that she’s the influencer responsible for getting Donald Trump to fire over a dozen members of his administration (and counting) for the hazily-defined crime of being disloyal to MAGA. This is something that none of her peers, individually, have been able to do. But to understand how she operates, look no further than Loomer’s latest attempted power play, which, as always, involves a fair amount of self-humiliation (and some disgusting slander).
Earlier this week, she leaked a private deposition that she’d given in a lawsuit wherein she explained, in her own words, why she’s published some of the most outre takes and allegations against her “enemies” on social media. The deposition was given as part of her defamation suit against HBO host Bill Maher, who claimed on a February 2025 show that Loomer was having a sexual affair with president Donald Trump. But you might have missed that context, since the social media chatter and headlines gravitated toward the sections of the deposition where Loomer was grilled about her most audacious posts: she claimed, among other things, that Sen. Lindsay Graham was secretly gay, that former Vice President Kamala Harris was a “DEI skank”, and her bitter MAGA rival Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) divorced her husband because of the “Arby’s in her pants” and was a “political prostitute [who was] sucking McCarthy’s dick all day.”
Unsurprisingly, Loomer defended herself and her statements, both in the deposition (“I’m saying she literally—it’s so ridiculous. I’m saying she literally put Arby’s in her pants”) and in public, after the deposition was reported on by Will Sommer at The Bulwark. “I was asked about Lindsey during my deposition so I had to tell the truth. I was under oath,” Loomer tweeted — along with a screenshot of the section where she explained why she believed Graham was gay.
HBO’s lawyers immediately argued that Loomer was violating several laws by making the private deposition public, and the document was immediately re-sealed. Loomer, on the other hand, claimed that she was simply trying to showcase that her testimony “went so well that the leftist law firm [representing HBO] wanted to SEAL my deposition.” Whether it went well is somewhat debatable, given the potential legal implications for Loomer violating a court order, as well as the incontrovertibility of Loomer saying some absolutely wild things in a legal deposition, and defending them.
Loomer described the stunt as another example of “Loomering,” the term that she uses to describe her internet bullying campaigns. At first glance, it’s a tactic honed from her time working as a secret-camera sting operator at Project Veritas, which famously recorded members of the media and academics saying things that could be spun as anti-conservative and amoral. Loomer’s stepped up her game, however, putting herself in front of the camera (and eventually the public eye) to make her point.
The fact that she constantly embarrasses herself only enhances the efficacy of “Loomering”: first, shame and embarrassment does not matter in the long term, so long as people are paying attention online. (She said as much the next day: “I wake up everyday to another hit piece. It’s because I am effective and it threatens a lot of people.”) Second: the internet is forever, and even if a judge orders a deposition to be resealed, gawkers will save copies, screenshot the juicy bits, and publish them for posterity. Loomer might have been recorded reading her own tweets out loud and forced to explain the gross bits, but she has also gotten several White House administration officials fired.
While it remains to be seen whether her influence extends beyond Trump’s daily capriciousness, Loomer’s unnerving gift for being an internet bully remains effective as long as she has allies in the administration, who leak her the insider info she publicly uses to humiliate others. (As she said to HBO’s lawyers, her friends in the White House told her that Graham was gay.) And as long as the storm she creates can grab Trump’s attention, he will most likely keep picking up her calls.
