ANNALS OF TRUMPI$TAN: Trump ally Loomer was paid thousands for political tweets, people familiar say (Drew Harwell & Scott Nover, WaPo, November 7, 2026)

From The Washington Post:

EXCLUSIVE

Trump ally Loomer was paid thousands for political tweets, people familiar say

People familiar with the arrangements allege pay-to-play business practices by one of President Donald Trump’s biggest online acolytes. Financial documents show details.

November 7, 2026 at 11:47 a.m. ESTToday at 11:47 a.m. EST

7 min

Laura Loomer attends a road dedication ceremony in January at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

By Drew Harwell

 and 

Scott Nover

The right-wing activist Laura Loomer has been paid by private clients to make political posts on social media without publicly disclosing the payments, according to a former campaign aide to President Donald Trump and three others familiar with the arrangements, shedding light on what they say is a business practice of one of the Trump administration’s most influential online firebrands.

The allegations were made by Alex Bruesewitz, an adviser to Trump’s 2024 campaign, and three other people who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Two of the three people said they had paid Loomer directly to post political messages on her X account, where she has 1.9 million followers. The third said they had overseen clients who paid her to post on the account. The three spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Bank transaction emails and a wire transfer statement reviewed by The Washington Post appear to show four payments totaling more than $60,000 sent to Loomer and a Florida-based company registered in her name, King Breaker Media, since May of last year. 

The documents do not specify the purpose of the payments, but two people familiar with the arrangements said they were for political posts.

Loomer, one of Trump’s best-known online acolytes, denied to The Post that she is paid to post on social media. She instead described herself as a journalist and activist and disputed the idea that she is an influencer paid to promote any political cause.

The new claims about Loomer’s influence business could add fuel to a growing debate about the little-regulated industry of political messaging on social media, where influencers on both sides of the aisle have operated in a legal gray area between advocacy and advertising.

Bruesewitz first posted his allegations on X on Thursday. Many of the details about Loomer’s alleged online influence operation have not been previously reported.

Bruesewitz said in an interview with The Post that he had paid Loomer for tweets last year. He said the money had been sent through his political consulting firm, X Strategies, for posts related to policy issues. He declined to specify what clients.

Despite brokering these deals himself, he believes that they should require clearer disclosures and have “gotten out of hand.”

Loomer disputed Bruesewitz’s account and said that his firm contacted her last year offering to pay her for research.

“He paid me to make a one-page research document for him, and then he wanted me to distribute the information. And that’s what I did,” Loomer said. Asked where she was expected to distribute the research, she said, “Either X or maybe an article.”

When asked how that was different from being paid to tweet, Loomer said she had actually been told to create the research document but that Bruesewitz had said he would have it distributed.

Loomer accused Bruesewitz of “lashing out” at her because of her political beliefs. 

Bruesewitz and the three other people declined to publicly share the tweets they said Loomer had published to maintain the privacy of their clients. But The Post reviewed a selection of the tweets under the condition that they not be revealed publicly. 

Two of the people said that Loomer charges $3,000 to $5,000 per tweet, and sometimes more. 

Loomer said she does not have set pricing for consulting work. “I certainly don’t charge $5,000 for a tweet,” she said.

The four people who had paid or oversaw payments to Loomer for posting political statements on social media said she is an effective, if sometimes unpredictable, messenger and a key way of trying to get a line directly to Trump.

Jared Holt, a senior researcher at Open Measures, a platform that measures the spread of online extremism and disinformation, agreed. “This is somebody that has a tremendous amount of influence and access to the president’s ear,” said Holt, who studies the far right.

Loomer said in an interview Thursday night that she could not discuss the terms of her work with most of her clients due to confidentiality agreements and the fact that her accountant handled her invoices.

“I’m not some influencer that makes money from tweeting. My business is public affairs and opposition research,” she said. “I also have a media company. It’s not illegal to make a living in America.”

Roughly one hour after The Post discussed the claims with Loomer, she announced on X that she is taking a hiatus from her online show, “Loomer Unleashed,” so she could pursue a more “healthy work life balance” and prepare for her upcoming wedding.

“I just need to step back, recharge, refocus, and be present in my own life and my own mind with peace and clarity for a little while,” she wrote. Loomer said the announcement had been scheduled in advance. 

Loomer, 33, has traveled with Trump and met privately with him in the Oval Office during his second term in office. Detractors within the administration have taken issue with Loomer’s relationship to the president and have lamented that several high-ranking defense and national security officials have been dismissed after she has publicly rebuked them, often on her X account.

Trump last year called Loomer a “very nice person” and a “patriot.” After the White House fired aides on the National Security Council staff last year whom Loomer had accused of disloyalty, Trump denied that she was involved in the dismissal but acknowledged she had made some firing recommendations and said, “Sometimes I listen to those recommendations.”

The White House declined to comment. 

The Federal Trade Commission requires bloggers, influencers and other online figures to disclose when they have been paid to endorse a product, but the agency doesn’t have jurisdiction over political ads.

Some advocacy groups have called for stronger regulations around paid political content. The Campaign Legal Center last year petitioned the Federal Election Commission to consider requiring “paid for by” disclosures on influencers’ political posts, saying they could help voters better assess the content they see online. California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed legislation that will penalize influencers who post paid political messages without disclosure.

Loomer has frequently said her bulldog advocacy reflects her genuine views, telling The Bulwark in May 2025 that she was “not paid for [her] posts.” 

One person who said they had paid Loomer to tweet on behalf of clients said she was deliberate in her work and would only tweet if she agreed with the position. The person said not every client wanted to work with her because they believed she was polarizing but that some had hired her assuming she had an audience in the White House.

The person added, however, that Loomer was like a “nuclear bomb.” “You have to be careful how to use that,” they said. “It’s effective but also turns a lot of things to s--- if you’re not careful.”

Loomer said she took that as a compliment. “I’m glad people find me to be effective and think I have a good reach,” she said. “I’m not going to apologize for monetizing the fact that people fear me.”

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What readers are saying

The comments express strong criticism of Laura Loomer and the Trump administration, highlighting themes of corruption, grifting, and unethical behavior. Many commenters accuse Loomer of being a paid influencer who promotes conspiracy theories and question her qualifications and... Show more

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ANNALS OF TRUMPI$TAN:I’m a Republican. We Have Let Too Many Weirdos Into Our Party. (Erick Erickson, NY Times, November 5, 2026)

From The New York Times:

OPINION

GUEST ESSAY

I’m a Republican. We Have Let Too Many Weirdos Into Our Party.

Nov. 5, 2026

Credit...Damon Winter/The New York Times

Listen · 6:31 min

By Erick Erickson

Mr. Erickson is the host of the Erick Erickson Show.

For the past two years, President Trump and his core supporters have governed by the mantra “We can just do stuff.” On Tuesday, voters replied, “So can we.” It did not go well for the Republican Party.

Voters did not ask for open borders on Tuesday, but they did ask for a deportation process that looks humane. They wanted a president focused on the economy instead of gold leaf in the Oval Office. Voters rejected a party that taxed them through tariffs, drove up gas prices through war and seemed more interested in construction projects in Washington, D.C., and social media meme wars than in middle-class struggles. They rejected a party driven by social media meme wars, subversive racism, a fondness for dictators and, at the end of the election, a weird fixation on Anakin Skywalker (whom they see as a symbol of young men’s political frustrations).

Voters want normal people in charge, and they took their wrath out on otherwise normal Republicans who refused to push back against the lunacy, corruption and incompetence within the G.O.P.

Republicans have spent years warning that a party unwilling to confront its radicals will be defined by them. They meant the Democrats, and pointed in particular at the democratic socialists working to take over the Democratic Party from the inside.

Now that warning applies to the G.O.P. The weirdo right will not stop in its attempt to take over the Republican Party, and party leadership must resist it or watch a group that openly declares its contempt for conservatism do to the G.O.P. what the democratic socialists are trying to do to the Democrats.

During the 2016 campaign, Ross Douthat warned, “If you dislike the religious right, wait till you meet the post-religious right.” A decade later, we have met it. It has borrowed the grievance politics, the identity obsessions and the contempt for dissent of the woke left, and it has dressed all of that in a rather Christless Christian nationalism. It intends to be the future of the Republican Party.

Consider how some of its leading lights spent the month before the election. For four consecutive Mondays, Peter Thiel, a billionaire, lectured on the Antichrist at a Masonic lodge in Nashville. The sessions drew William Wolfe, Andrew Isker and Joshua Haymes, prominent Christian nationalists. Mr. Wolfe’s Center for Baptist Leadership rallies online mobs against Southern Baptist pastors who resist his project and offer a gentle word about the culture.

Some of the funding behind this movement comes from Charles Haywood, who made his fortune selling a shampoo company. Mr. Haywood has written that his preferred government “will not be democratic,” that women “will not be permitted to choose career over family” and that men “will not be permitted to choose not to have a family” without “significant penalties.” He has written glowingly of the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. His foundation has reportedly given the Claremont Institute nearly $400,000 since 2022, and it has funded American Reformer, a publication devoted to recapturing Christian institutions, and American Moment, a government staffing pipeline founded with JD Vance’s support.

Nate Fischer, who is a founder of American Reformer and runs the venture capital firm New Founding, belongs to Mr. Haywood’s men-only fraternal order and published its mission statement, which promise to curate a pool of ready-made ideologues in the case of regime change. Josh Abbotoy, who co-founded American Reformer, has written that America will need a “Protestant Franco.” In the same movement, pastors such as Joel Webbon argue for repealing the 19th Amendment.

The intellectual seriousness of this crowd was tested in 2024. James Lindsay, then an atheist provocateur, lightly rewrote “The Communist Manifesto” in the vocabulary of the New Right and submitted it to American Reformer under a pseudonym. “A rising spirit is haunting America,” it began, “the spirit of a true Christian Right.” American Reformer published it. When Mr. Lindsay revealed the hoax, the publication kept the piece online and called it a reasonable aggregation of New Right ideas.

These are not conservatives. They are progressives with a different set of enemies. My own denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America, barred American Reformer from having an exhibitor booth at its annual meeting, and it was right to do so.

This group is invested in the future of Vice President JD Vance as the agent of the change they want. At a National Conservatism conference in Jerusalem, which happened to be held on the anniversary of the Oct. 7 massacre, Mr. Wolfe said that “JD Vance is our guy.” According to Rod Dreher, he also suggested that conservative American Jews should know their place. Mr. Vance, for his part, has cultivated the weirdo right rather than confront it. He appears to be going along for the ride. Even after Tucker Carlson turned on President Trump and kept mainstreaming antisemitic conspiracy theories, Mr. Vance has not put any real distance between himself and the weirdo right.

The men who talk most about Christian nationalism have the least use for what Christ actually commanded. They have argued in print that “love your enemies” does not extend to their political opponents.

Normal Americans want none of it, and on Tuesday they said so. Despite the midterm results, the reaction on the weirdo right, led by a vocal group of Christian nationalists, grievance-mongers and others, has been to insist on doubling down on economic protectionism and a heavy-handed executive intent on governance through executive power. More of the same will lead only to further rejection.

If Republicans want those voters back, the party’s leaders, beginning with the man who wants to lead it in 2028, will have to reject the demands of the weirdo right. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida was able to govern a multiethnic and multiracial state with a winning coalition that put competence above meme wars and demands for American Caesars. So too have Gov. Brian Kemp in Georgia, Gov. Greg Abbott in Texas and other Republicans focused more on their states and less on group chats.

Until the G.O.P. rejects the weird, the fringe and the grievance hustlers, Democrats will happily remind voters whom the G.O.P. keeps around.