Laura Loomer Drops So Many Whoppers in New Interview That Magazine Issues a Disclaimer Warning Readers

Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images

A Florida political magazine scored an interview with Laura Loomer, and prefaced it with a disclaimer warning readers that the claims she made “have not been fact checked or independently verified.”

INFLUENCE magazine is published by Peter Schorsch, who also runs the Florida Politics website. The magazine is a chatty tour with the elected officials, candidates, lobbyists, consultants, attorneys, and media figures who play various roles in “The Process,” as Sunshine State politicos colloquially refer to the political scene here. Flipping through the pages, in either the print or online edition, includes everything from glossy ads from the state’s biggest lobbying firms, political analysis columns, and interviews with Floridians who have — as the front cover says — influence.

Loomer, 32, is a far-right activist, conspiracy theorist, and self-proclaimed “proud Islamaphobe” who has been a staunch ally of President Donald Trump, at times clashing vociferously with others in the president’s inner circle. After getting banned from the vast majority of social media platforms a few years ago, she’s back with a large audience of millions of followers.

Despite the numerous controversies surrounding her — or perhaps, knowing the president’s own proclivities, because of that — Loomer has an astonishing level of access and influence with Trump. She’s claimed credit for targeting some administration officials that the president later fired, and others he hired, plus she recently got a Pentagon Press Corps pass.

Loomer does unquestionably have influence and is a Florida resident, and the latest issue of INFLUENCE included an interview with her by Jacob Ogles, who is also a reporter for Florida Politics. Social media posts promoting the magazine touted a chance to read “Laura Loomer in her own words!”

And the magazine meant that — “in her own words” — literally. In her own words and nothing else.

The interview, which Ogles confirmed to Mediaite was conducted over the phone with Loomer, is presented in an “as told to” format, with Loomer’s words directly transcribed for the reader.

The article was prefaced with a short disclaimer, shown in the screenshot below, that made clear the claims were Loomer’s personal views and no one else’s, and “have not been fact checked or independently verified.”

Screenshot via INFLUENCE magazine.

Loomer has been covered heavily by the Florida press corps — including Ogles and his colleagues at Florida Politics — both for her status in Trump world and her two failed congressional campaigns in 2020 and 2022. Ogles and the magazine did not go into this blind.

Reached for comment, Schorsch confirmed that there had been internal conversations about how to handle the interview after it had been completed. The concept to transcribe Loomer’s words with minimal editing and add a disclaimer was suggested to Schorsch by an editor, “but I knew what I was walking into,” he told Mediaite.

“I am proud of, and think it’s a strength of the magazine,” Schorsch said, “that we have both parties well represented in it. And we have the ultimate lobbying insiders and the MAGA faithful, like Laura.”

“Loomer is also nothing if not a Florida Woman, for better or worse,” he added.

The magazine’s caution about Loomer’s commentary was well-founded.  Reading the article itself (begins on page 146), multiple claims by Loomer pop out as unfounded, unverifiable, questionable, or just plain false. Fact-checking her is an exhausting endeavor, but one which is alleviated by her habit of endlessly recycling already-debunked or never-verified claims she’s made before over the years.

Among Loomer’s claims in this interview is saying she graduated as valedictorian from Barry University in Miami Shores, after getting kicked out over a stunt she pulled with James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas secretly filming her professors (likely a violation of state law, as Florida is a two-party consent state). Local news reports said she had “claimed” she had been suspended from the university, but never were able to get Loomer or the university to verify the suspension or if she had ever received a diploma at all, much less as valedictorian.

She also claims she was “permanently banned on every single social media platform as a result of my investigative reporting.” Quick Google searches dispel that assertion, with numerous media outlets reporting her suspensions came because of crackdowns on misinformation and extremism, tweets she posted targeting Muslim members of Congress or rideshare drivers, over hate speech rules, and so on for Facebook and Instagram, Twitter, Uber, and Lyft, etc.

Loomer regurgitates unfounded claims she has made about the August 2022, saying “[t]here was a lot of suspicious activity on election night at the Orange County Supervisor of Elections Office, when the machines went down, and the difference in votes between me and U.S. Rep. Daniel Webster was only a couple thousand votes.”

Loomer lost that GOP primary challenge to Webster by seven points — a closer call than the incumbent congressman’s team expected, but a clear result nonetheless. Loomer refused to concede and “broke into tears” on election night, declaring without any evidence that the election had been stolen from her, echoing Trump’s baseless claims about the 2020 election.

She would end up part of a lawsuit filed in September 2022 challenging the results of her election. It was dismissed with prejudice two months later.

Loomer’s claims of “suspicious activity” at the Orange County elections office are vague, but there just aren’t any contemporaneous reports of problems, and then-Supervisor of Elections, Bill Cowles, had a long track record of reliability, respected by candidates and political party operatives on both sides of the aisle.

Over the years, there have been occasional glitches on the Orange County elections website, like this one reported by News 6 Orlando in 2024, but they were resolved quickly and did not affect the actual vote counting, which is observed by media and representatives from the political parties and candidates.

Of course, the major problem with Loomer’s unrelenting accusations about the 2022 election is that the paper trail is clear that she lost. Orange County has had paper ballots for decades, even before the infamous Bush v. Gore 2000 election recount spurred statewide reforms. Loomer lost because Webster got more votes.

Much of the rest of the interview is Loomer’s claims about things that Trump has told her or promised to help her with, including that he was going to endorse her in the 2022 primary, but he was given “a fake poll” that said she was behind in a key geographic region, and that he’s promised to endorse her in a future race.

Considering the president has often contradicted his own claims and is a major contributor to keeping America’s fact-checkers employed, deciphering what’s true and accurate about Loomer’s claims about promises Trump made in private conversations is simply not feasible.

Read Loomer’s interview — “in her own words” — here.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.