Laura Loomer is unhappy.
She’s unhappy with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — in part, it seems, because of his happiness with the prospect of Dr. Casey Means as the next surgeon general. Loomer has accused Means of witchery. No, not metaphorically.
She’s unhappy with Pam Bondi — and explained why on a recent edition of the podcast “Loomer Unleashed,” a misnomer given the lack of evidence that Loomer has ever been leashed. “She is a full-fledged liar,” Loomer said, referring to Bondi. She also slammed Bondi for being “on Fox News more than she does her job.” That last part revealed Loomer’s lament as pure theater. She surely has enough brain cells to recognize that being on Fox News is a Trump cabinet member’s job.
I left out House Republicans. Loomer is unhappy with them for entertaining serious cuts to Medicaid, which she deems politically ruinous. (See? There are those brain cells.) She’s not thrilled, either, with whoever nudged President Trump toward winged swag from Qatar.
“We cannot accept a $400 million ‘gift’ from jihadists in suits,” she wrote in a post on X. In another: “It will be a stain.”
So how does that leave Loomer feeling about Trump? She’s still professing big love. But it and she are clearly more complicated than many of us realized. And her gripes and infighting with others in the MAGA movement mean trouble for Trump.
Loomer exemplifies the danger — to Trump’s own fortunes as well as the country’s — of how he often sizes up potential allies. He looks not at the quality of their ideas but at the audacity of their provocations, not at how nicely they play with others but at how reliably they rile their followers. That’s a fine approach if you’re just owning the libs and staging a carnival. But if you mean to govern? The freak show gets in the way.
Loomer, 31, apparently drew Trump’s eye and kindled his adoration the usual way — with a huge presence on social media, where she slobbered over him and savaged his opponents. She also checked two other boxes: conspiracy theorist (she claimed 9/11 was an inside job) and bigot (the White House would “smell like curry” with Kamala Harris as president). Is it any wonder Trump was smitten?
She has been welcomed at Mar-a-Lago, where, during one event that she attended, Trump told the crowd: “You don’t want to be Loomered. If you’re Loomered, you’re in deep trouble. That’s the end of your career in a sense. Thanks, Laura.” He expressed his gratitude by letting her ride on his 2024 campaign plane, having her accompany him to a 9/11 memorial — yes, a 9/11 memorial — and, just last month, meeting with her in the Oval Office, where she reportedly accused various officials working with the National Security Council of disloyalty to Trump. After that conversation, Trump fired six of them.
She has a sway that doesn’t seem to be going away. On Tuesday, as I caught up on the news, I couldn’t escape her: She was mentioned in several articles in The Times, in an Axios report on MAGA displeasure with that Qatari plane, in a doozy of a column in The Bulwark by Will Sommer that began, “Right-wing activist Laura Loomer has never had more influence than right now.” Try that with your morning coffee.
Sommer’s column recalled Loomer’s successful attacks on Trump’s designee for surgeon general before Means, Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, who’d inflated her medical school credentials and, in Loomer’s view, was too supportive of vaccines. Trump ditched Nesheiwat. And the column suggested that Loomer is emboldened and branching out ever more widely: She recently questioned Trump’s nomination of the defense lawyer Stanley Woodward, whose clients have included the MAGA stalwarts Kash Patel and Peter Navarro, to a senior Justice Department role on the grounds that Woodward’s wife has a whiff of liberalism about her. That stance prompted an enraged, obscene response from the political operative Arthur Schwartz, a close associate of Donald Trump Jr.’s.
He’s not the only Trump supporter disgusted with Loomer; that was the real point of Sommer’s column, which noted that “prominent figures on the right” are asking whether her recent defense of Medicaid and of the oil company Chevron’s work in Venezuela were paid for. Loomer firmly denies that. But Sommer noted that she has practice as a pitchwoman — and an odd sort of practice at that: “After a dog-food company sponsored her online show, Loomer ate the food herself on air.”
There’s indigestion aplenty in the worlds of MAGA and MAHA (that’s Make America Healthy Again, for those who’ve avoided the acronym or enviably willed themselves to forget it), and that’s often overlooked in the facile descriptions of Trump’s supporters as a cult. Only a fraction of them speak and act so pliantly; the rest are fractious. Ardent anti-vaxxers stick it to vaccine agnostics. Defenders of Medicaid clash with obliterate-the-welfare-state nihilists. There are the Christian warriors who want to sideline John Reid, who is the openly gay Republican nominee for lieutenant governor in Virginia, and there are the anti-establishment types who admire Reid’s truculence and support him.
Trump’s behemoth of a spending package — which he and other Republicans are actually, sophomorically calling The One, Big, Beautiful Bill — could easily degenerate into one big, beautiful melee, not only because that’s the way of Washington but also because discord is what recruits like Loomer live for. Discipline isn’t their strong suit. And there are oh so many of them, jostling and jeering.
Simba, Bambi and Us
In his forthcoming book, “The Science of Revenge,” James Kimmel Jr. draws a fascinating contrast between two of Disney’s most successful and beloved animated films: “Bambi,” released in 1942, and “The Lion King,” released in 1994.
Both tell the story of a spirited young animal — Bambi in “Bambi,” Simba in “The Lion King” — who must overcome the trauma of a parent’s murder as he grows older and stronger and claims his mature place in the world. But Bambi doesn’t stew in anger and plot payback, while Simba is all about settling scores.
“The Lion King” imparts the lesson that “when somebody hurts you, hurt them back,” Kimmel, a lecturer in psychiatry at the Yale Medical School, writes in “The Science of Revenge.” “Nurture your grudges from childhood into adulthood. Prepare yourself for war. Seek vengeance. Not only will you feel great, but you’ll become king.”
Does that sound like the arc and credo of any president you know?
Kimmel’s book, to be published on May 27, presents revenge-seeking as an addiction and Trump as a probable addict in that regard. But it’s less about Trump than it is about all of us. What does it mean that Disney went from marketing Bambi’s stoicism to selling Simba’s fury half a century later? Or that Facebook elevated angry posts and enraged responses to them as a traffic generator? Or that politicians woo supporters by pledging to bring their enemies to their knees?
Those questions haunt me. They’re at the center of my latest book, “The Age of Grievance,” which came out this week in paperback, with updated material. I continue to be amazed and alarmed by the degree to which resentments rather than aspirations dominate so many Americans’ political conversations. Voters insist on pinning their disappointments on a discrete cast of oppressors and want those villains to suffer.
Trump thrives in that context. It’s key to his survival. He wins loyalty and gets a free pass for his many unfulfilled promises and countless ethical transgressions because he’s holding back all those other awful people and — even better! — tormenting them.
He’s satisfying a widespread lust for revenge. And as Kimmel can tell you, that’s a mighty force.
What I’m Reading, Saying and Listening To
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When I gave myself a hasty refresher course on “Bambi,” I made one disturbing discovery and one joyful one. Disturbing: There’s a forthcoming horror movie, “Bambi: The Reckoning,” that’s part of an evolving series that previously introduced a homicidal Winnie the Pooh. Joyful: In The New Yorker in 2022, Kathryn Schulz did a superb article on the lineage of “Bambi,” beginning with the original German-language novel, “Bambi: A Life in the Woods,” by Felix Salten. Schulz noted that Salten’s book “is, at heart, a coming-of-age story, cervine kin to ‘Oliver Twist,’ ‘Little Women’ and ‘Giovanni’s Room.’” She added, “In the language in which it was written, however, it is often described not as a bildungsroman — a general novel of maturation — but more specifically as an erziehungsroman: a novel of education and training.” And thus I learned two words, as I also hadn’t encountered “cervine,” which is like “feline,” “equine,” “bovine” or “porcine,” only for deer. I subsequently went down a rabbit — er, leporine — hole and discovered that “asinine” really does mean ass-related (in the donkey sense) and that something lizard-related is “lacertine” and something mouse-related “murine.” Who says you can’t teach an old canine new tricks?
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In conjunction with the paperback release of “The Age of Grievance,” I chatted with Donny Deutsch for an episode of his podcast that’s available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, among other platforms.
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I’ve tended in this newsletter to showcase musicians more interested in your soul than in your sweat. But with the following three recommendations, I have the gym in mind. Each is a song that you put at that point in the playlist when you’re likely to quit your workout and need something agitated, agitating and just plain catchy enough to propel you through another four minutes. Try “Every You Every Me,” by Placebo, which you may recognize from the soundtrack of the 1999 movie “Cruel Intentions.” Or “Ecstasy,” by Black Lab, which I promise I’m not recommending solely because the band’s name brings to mind an especially popular dog. Or “If,” by Janet Jackson. I think of Jackson as the great treadmill artist of our time. That’s a flat-out, fast-sprinting compliment.
For the Love of Sentences
On CNN.com, Allison Morrow processed Trump’s announcement last week about progress in trade talks with Britain: “OK, so it’s more of a concept of a deal. If a trade deal is, like, Michelangelo’s David, this is more like a block of marble. Or really it’s like a receipt from the marble guy that says we’ve placed an order for a block of marble.” (Thanks to Daniel Levinson of Montreal for nominating this.)
In The Washington Post, Erik Wemple took issue with the frictionless anti-Trump chorus on MSNBC. “At least CNN viewers get to hear the pro-Trump arguments in all their fact-deprived glory,” he wrote. “I lean toward the CNN model, but not enough to strain my calves.” (Michael Smith, Georgetown, Ky.)
In Golfweek, Eamon Lynch reflected on Trump’s grifting: “There was a time when it would have been scandalous for a sitting U.S. president to use the office to serve his personal business interests, but that was back when America had attorneys general who didn’t think an emoluments clause was the disclaimer on a moisturizer.” (Kelly Parden, Wappingers Falls, N.Y., and Ben Scott, Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.)
In The Globe and Mail of Toronto, Tony Keller suggested that Trump’s economic and diplomatic dealings amount to “a failed Hollywood blockbuster” with extravagant special effects but a nonsensical plot: “It‘s ‘2 Fast 2 Furious’ with no GPS, a steering wheel facing the rear window and a distracted driver who can’t stop going on about his William McKinley decals.” (Nadine Sherwin, Vancouver, British Columbia)
On Facebook, the Fear and Loathing: Closer to the Edge page gasped at Stephen Miller’s characterization of habeas corpus as a disposable nuisance: “He’s not saying this in secret. He’s saying it on national TV. With legal citations. Like a guy doing Yelp reviews of Guantánamo.” (Shelley Murray, Richmond, Va.)
In The Times, Maureen Dowd recognized one of the entertainment mogul Barry Diller’s less heralded contributions to our culture: “He took over the USA Network and instructed Dick Wolf to lean into the ‘Law & Order’ universe, which is how we get to watch Mariska Hargitay say ‘Where were you last Tuesday?’ pretty much 24 hours a day.” (Peter O’Carroll, Lake Charles, La.)
Also in The Times, the performer John Cameron Mitchell recalled what he “learned from 18 years of military upbringing (socialism for rednecks featuring free health care), 45 years of theater and film (authoritarianism for liberals with not much health care) and an introduction to queer activism in the time of AIDS (anarchism for all in an attempt to save lives).” (R. Joshua Roche, Twentynine Palms, Calif.)
And Kwame Anthony Appiah addressed an urban woman whose spouse thought that they should perhaps arm themselves in case of political violence: “Maybe there’s a ‘Last of Us’ scenario flickering in your heads, where bandoliered bad guys roam a collapsed society, but even then, I doubt that whatever firearm your husband is contemplating would help. In a world where some are armed to the teeth, being armed to your toes seems unlikely to do anything but escalate the dangers for you.” (Peter M. Handler, Chicago)
And in The Los Angeles Times, the columnist Steve Lopez marked his personal milestone of 50 years in journalism by observing that while our profession has been diminished, his love and respect for it have not, and he’s staying put: “I’m here to tell you how lucky I’ve been for half a century, why I wouldn’t change a thing if someone loaded me into a time machine, and why, even though I’m buckled into a seat on the Hindenburg, I still want to order a few more cocktails before we crash-land.” (Lynne Culp, Van Nuys, Calif.)
To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here and include your name and place of residence.
Frank Bruni is a professor of journalism and public policy at Duke University, the author of the book “The Age of Grievance” and a contributing Opinion writer. He writes a weekly email newsletter. Instagram Threads @FrankBruni • Facebook
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