In the past 24 hours, far-right internet personality Laura Loomer has majorly flexed the influence she wields over the Trump administration’s staffing decisions, claiming not one but two heads.
On Tuesday evening, Loomer publicly cast aspersions on Jen Easterly, a former Biden cybersecurity official who was recently named to a distinguished chair position in West Point’s social sciences department.
Responding to the West Point dean’s since-deleted announcement of Easterly’s appointment, Loomer wrote on X: “Wow [Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth]! Looks like some of your underlings are trying to screw you. There are clearly a lot of Biden holdovers at DOD undermining the Trump admin.” (Easterly, who—Loomer failed to mention—also worked in George W. Bush’s administration, has publicly disputed Trump’s baseless claims about recent elections being rigged.)
The right-wing provocateur urged a “massive” reduction in force at the Defense Department so as to weed out “moles” and tagged the accounts of West Point, the Department of Defense, and Hegseth in the post.
By Wednesday morning, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll publicly shared a memo stating that Easterly was dismissed,and that West Point will “immediately pause non-governmental and outside groups from selecting employees.” Driscoll also requested a “top-down review” of the academy’s hiring practices.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell lauded the decision, and Loomer also celebrated the outcome.
The shake-up at West Point, ostensibly the result of Loomer’s single-handed effort, comes on the heels of another victory for the self-described “pro-white nationalist,” who on Tuesday succeeded in taking down Vinay Prasad, a top official at Trump’s Food and Drug Administration.
Prasad was the FDA’s top vaccine official and an adherent of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement. But even RFK Jr.’s support wasn’t enough to shield him from Loomer’s wrath for supposed lèse-majesté against Trump.
Loomer launched a campaign against Prasad in recent days, claiming that he was a “progressive leftist saboteur undermining President Trump’s FDA.” Prasad stepped down Tuesday, with a Health Department spokesman saying he “did not want to be a distraction to the great work of the FDA in the Trump administration.”
These two back-to-back Loomerings are just the latest.
In April, Trump reportedly fired a number of national security council officials for disloyalty the day after Loomer flagged them to the president as “people who have played a role in sabotaging” him. She also reportedly sowed doubts about Mike Waltz before he was ousted from his national security adviser post.
The post Laura Loomer Claims Two More Trump Heads in Just 24 Hours appeared first on New Republic.
