Laura Loomer had President Trump’s full attention.
Sitting directly across from the president in the Oval Office, Ms. Loomer, the far-right agitator and conspiracy theorist, held a stack of papers that detailed a litany of accusations about “disloyal” members of the National Security Council. The national security adviser, Michael Waltz, had arrived late and could only watch as Ms. Loomer ripped into his staff.
Fire them, Mr. Trump instructed Mr. Waltz, according to people with knowledge of the meeting on Wednesday. The president was furious and demanded to know why these people had been hired in the first place.
The events of Wednesday and Thursday, with more than a half-dozen national security officials fired on the advice of Ms. Loomer, unsettled even some veteran Trump officials. But the situation perfectly encapsulates Mr. Trump’s longtime penchant for soliciting information from dubious sources. The difference now, in Mr. Trump’s second term, is that he has fewer people around him who try to keep those voices away.
In a social media post on Friday, Ms. Loomer explained why two of the people who lost their jobs this week were on her list. Gen. Timothy D. Haugh,
the head of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command, had been chosen by Gen. Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whom Ms. Loomer called a traitor. And General Haugh’s deputy, Wendy Noble, was close to James Clapper, a former director of national intelligence and fierce critic of Mr. Trump.
People close to General Haugh said he did not know how he ended up in Ms. Loomer’s cross hairs. He was traveling in Japan when the Pentagon told him that his “services would no longer be needed,” without any further explanation, according to two former U.S. officials.
White House officials did not respond to questions about the meeting. In a statement, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said: “President Trump has assembled a great team of people who work tirelessly to better our country. As we have always said, and the president maintained last night when speaking with reporters on Air Force One, he continues to have confidence in Mike Waltz and his national security team.”
During Mr. Trump’s first term, some aides, in particular John F. Kelly, the former Marine general who was the president’s longest-serving chief of staff, spent a large portion of their days blocking off people they described as “the crazies.”
But by the end of 2020, those efforts had entirely broken down. Mr. Trump had fired his gatekeepers, or they had resigned in disgust, and a parade of fringe figures had easy access to the Oval Office.
People eager to feed into his belief that the November presidential race had been stolen from him had freewheeling access to Mr. Trump in the final weeks of his first term. They included Mike Lindell, the chief executive of MyPillow, and Sidney Powell, a former federal prosecutor who spread wild conspiracy theories about foreign interference in the 2020 election.
With Mr. Trump now more confident in his executive power and instincts and bolstered by a team that shares his sense of persecution, there is no pretense that he can be controlled or managed. The door to the Oval Office is wide open and seated just outside it is
Natalie Harp, a former far-right television presenter who lives in the internet’s fever swamps and is deeply devoted to the president.
Ms. Loomer was not alone with the president during the meeting on Wednesday. Also in the room at various points were Vice President JD Vance; Susie Wiles, the chief of staff; Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary; and Sergio Gor, the head of presidential personnel. At some point, they were joined by Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, a congressman who, like Ms. Powell and Mr. Lindell, was a key player in Mr. Trump’s efforts to cling to power after his 2020 loss.
Mr. Perry was appointed months ago to the House Intelligence Committee, giving him a level of visibility into intelligence and activities in Mr. Trump’s government, including inside some of the agencies under discussion in the meeting.
But while Mr. Perry is an elected lawmaker, Ms. Loomer, who twice ran unsuccessfully for Congress, is the kind of blunt-force operative that Mr. Trump has been drawn to since 1973, when he hired Roy M. Cohn, first as a lawyer and then as a mentor and fixer.
Ms. Loomer calls Roger J. Stone Jr., another of Mr. Cohn’s acolytes and Mr. Trump’s longest-serving political adviser, her mentor. But while Mr. Stone had worked for mainstream political candidates over several decades and Mr. Cohn was close with top levels of business and political elites, Ms. Loomer, just 31, had operated entirely on the fringes until Mr. Trump’s first presidency. And in her version of political warfare, nothing is out of bounds.
During the 2024 Republican primary contest, when she was arguably Mr. Trump’s most aggressive online advocate, she floated the baseless conspiracy theory that the wife of his rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, had faked her breast cancer.
Mr. Trump and some in his orbit view Ms. Loomer as a talented researcher, capable of finding dirt others cannot, or will not, excavate. And Mr. Trump has long liked having allies who are willing to lob attacks that even he might consider too risky, allowing the president to distance himself.
Ms. Loomer has fashioned herself as a loyalty enforcer from outside the administration, but she has solid enough relationships inside to be added to Mr. Trump’s calendar for a meeting. Several weeks ago, she incorporated an opposition research firm called Loomered Strategies, and frequently posts information on social media to discredit and question the loyalty of people working for Mr. Trump.
Recently, she has focused on targeting judges who have opposed Mr. Trump and named several administration staff members she insisted were subversive or didn’t belong there.
In the days before the meeting — originally scheduled for Monday but moved when she couldn’t get to Washington in time — Ms. Loomer had posted about several N.S.C. aides she insisted needed to be removed. Shortly after, the N.S.C. began sending some of those people back to their home agencies.
Typically, in previous administrations, the N.S.C. staff does not go through the presidential personnel vetting process that other aides do. But in this iteration of the Trump White House, N.S.C. staff members were vetted by administration officials. One hire was stopped midway through the hiring process when Mr. Trump’s personnel team discovered the person had been somewhat critical about the pro-Trump riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
But the intense focus on who is deemed “loyal” and who isn’t has been a factor since the transition. The criteria are often confusing, with senior officials sending mixed messages in public and private.
On Thursday, Ms. Loomer defended Mr. Gor on the social media site X, saying, “Sergio is 100% correct to implement LOYALTY OATHS. Leave Sergio alone!”
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Thursday, the president insisted that Ms. Loomer had nothing to do with the firings. But he also said, “She makes recommendations of things and people, and sometimes I listen to those recommendations.”
Reached by phone in Los Angeles on Friday morning, Ms. Loomer advocated even more dismissals.
“In my opinion President Trump should re-evaluate his entire National Security Council,” she said as she prepared for a deposition of the TV host Bill Maher. Ms. Loomer sued the comedian for defamation in October, because of remarks he had made on air about her relationship with Mr. Trump.
She added that “if the president still has confidence in Michael Waltz’s ability to be an effective N.S.C. director, then Michael Waltz needs to either take a course on vetting or learn to do a better job at vetting.”
