By Kanishka Singh and Gabriella Borter
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House rebuked former President Donald Trump on Thursday for his association with far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, who has been traveling this week with the Republican presidential candidate.
Loomer says she does not work for Trump. However, she has mentioned speaking to him about political matters and frequents his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida. Her incendiary posts on X, where she has 1.2 million followers, at times seem to provide grist for Trump’s next lines of attack.
Ahead of Trump’s debate with Democratic Vice President and presidential candidate Kamala Harris on Tuesday, Loomer said that if Harris, who is of Indian descent, won the Nov. 5 election, “the White House will smell like curry & White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center.”
“It is, repugnant, these types of comments, it is un-American to say these types of things, exactly the kind of hateful and divisive rhetoric that we should denounce,” White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said on Thursday.
“No leader should ever associate with someone who spreads this kind of ugliness, this kind of racist poison,” Jean-Pierre said.
Loomer flew with Trump to his Tuesday debate in Pennsylvania and was in New York with him and his team on Wednesday for a commemoration of the Sept. 11, 2001, al Qaeda attacks, according to video and photo footage.
Loomer has previously suggested the Sept. 11 attacks were an insider job by sharing a video last year on Twitter that promoted that conspiracy theory. She has since changed her position and told CNN in an interview published on Thursday that the attacks were carried out by “Islamic terrorists.”
Trump’s campaign, when asked about the White House criticism of his ties to Loomer, did not directly address their relations but said he sought bipartisan unity in the Wednesday ceremony marking the Sept. 11 attacks.
In an online post, Loomer dismissed the White House criticism, denying she was a racist and suggesting that Jean-Pierre, the daughter of Haitian immigrants, was critical because she didn’t like Loomer’s social media post on Thursday about a false claim that Haitian immigrants are eating pets.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh, Gabriella Borter, Alexandra Ulmer and Helen Coster, editing by Ross Colvin and Howard Goller)
