MAGA provocateur Laura Loomer has never worked in the White House or held any government position, yet wields considerable power and influence due to her close relationship with President Donald Trump.

Most recently, the acerbic social media influencer directed her acidic and racist vitriol toward several prominent Black female politicians, primarily to distract from and denigrate political distinctions.

The list is long. Most recently, Loomer labeled Reps. Angie Nixon, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, Cori Bush, and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson as “ghetto, entitled, race-obsessed, destructive Black b–.” She’s also denigrated Rep. Jasmine Crockett, former Vice President Kamala Harris, Attorney Fani Willis, and even fellow right-winger Candace Owens along similar racists lines.

Loomer’s putrid vermin is so rancid that even former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a right-wing activist who isn’t a stranger to negative rhetoric, called it out on social media.

“When will the President and the Republican Party reject her and her hateful racist behavior?” Greene wrote. “They refuse to, which tells you everything you need to know.”

Mind you, Greene is the same person who was the keynote speaker at a white nationalist conference. Go figure!

We cannot dismiss Loomer as some obscure person shouting tirades on the internet. Trump has publicly lauded her work, and reliable reporting has verified her political proximity to him and her considerable influence inside his political circle. In April 2025, she met with Trump at the White House and persuaded him to terminate personnel she believed were insufficiently loyal to him and his larger agenda.

This is the same person who promoted conspiracy theories about 9/11, yet Trump invited her to a 9/11 memorial event during his 2024 campaign. Thus, when Republicans demand accountability for inflammatory rhetoric from people associated with Democrats and the left, they must demand similar denouncements from their fellow conservatives. Holding individuals accountable for irresponsible rhetoric cannot solely be a partisan endeavor.

One of the few accurate things Loomer has said is that stereotypes have a basis in fact. This was evident in her wrongheaded and inaccurate attacks on highly successful Black women. By doing so, Loomer was propagating century-old stereotypes about Black women as loud, angry, and domineering, which came from propaganda during slavery to dehumanize, manipulate, and control. Such reductive stereotypes were further amplified through racially offensive performances and, decades later, mainstreamed in popular culture.

Loomer’s tirades integrate huge spoonfuls of misogynoir, the term coined by Northwestern University Professor Moya Bailey to describe the combination of misogyny and anti-Black racism.

By the late 1960s and ’70s, in response to increasing levels of desegregation, the term ghetto was frequently invoked to describe Black and Latino people as behaving in a “low-class manner.” Often offensive, the term implied stereotypes that characterized them as low-income, unkempt, and lewd. The definition of the term as an adjective and these characteristics were associated with experiences growing up in low-income neighborhoods.

It is sad we have arrived at a juncture where denouncing racism is based on political circumstances. Black women do not have to be short of immortal to be treated like human beings. And no politician should have to consult certain political gatekeepers before declaring racism, sexism, and anti-Semitism are wrong and totally unacceptable.

If Republicans cannot say that racism is wrong, and that President Trump should disavow individuals who traffic in this kind of hateful, vile, and bigoted garbage, then they need to surrender any pretense of moral authority. Silence means complicity.

The Republican Party must find the backbone to condemn hate when it comes from deplorable people such as Laura Loomer and others who define themselves as members of their party if they are genuinely serious about being an open, political tent. Case closed.

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Copyright 2026 Elwood Watson, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate

Elwood Watson is a professor of history, Black studies, and gender and sexuality studies at East Tennessee State University. He is also an author and public speaker.