🌊 Loomer Looms Large

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By Robert McGreevy

In early May this year, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Marty Makary welcomed Dr. Vinay Prasad – a board-certified oncologist, professor of epidemiology, and ardent critic of Covid measures – into his agency with an exuberant post on X. 

Bringing Prasad on board to replace the pro-vaccine Dr. Peter Marks as head of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), Makary lauded Prasad’s credentials and said he “brings the kind of scientific rigor, independence, and transparency we need.” 

Shortly after his hiring, Prasad also ascended to the roles of the FDA’s Chief Medical Officer and Chief Scientific Officer. But three months later, he was out of a job.

His voluntary departure was the culmination of what some called a Big Pharma smear campaign, which came after Prasad threatened to derail a controversial gene therapy drug from Sarepta Therapeutics that was linked to the deaths of three children. 

Prasad has since, at the behest of Makary and RFK Jr., returned to the FDA. But his messy and public withdrawal followed a pattern of public condemnation and ensuing action from within the Trump Administration based around one figure in particular: Laura Loomer. 

Loomer, a guerilla journalist turned Republican Congressional candidate, took to X in mid-July to begin a pressure campaign against Prasad. Tweeting out to her sizable 1.7M followers, Loomer dug up past tweets from Prasad in which he voiced support for Democrats like Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren. 

“VINAY PRASAD, THE LEFTIST SABOTEUR UNDERMINING TRUMP’S [FDA], MUST BE FIRED NOW!” she tweeted, calling Prasad a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

Her onslaught ran from July 21 until July 28, when she accused Prasad of owning and stabbing a Trump voodoo doll, a comment Prasad appeared to make in jest. Prasad resigned shortly after the explosive attack.

It’s not the first time Loomer has wielded her platform to affect personnel changes in the Trump Administration. In April, Loomer walked into the White House with a binder full of papers that, according to The New York Times, accused six Trump National Security staffers of being disloyal to the president.

Shortly after the meeting, which included Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Trump fired the six National Security staffers, including senior director of intelligence Brian Walsh. 

Trump denied that Loomer’s input had anything to do with the firings. But the record shows she has a clear influence on 47. Trump axed an assistant US attorney from Los Angeles after Loomer bashed him publicly. In March, he revoked Hunter Biden’s security clearance after Loomer tweeted a photo of said detail with Biden in South Africa. And just this week, Trump halted visa approvals for Gazans following Loomer’s assertion that they posed a national security threat. 

So who is Laura Loomer? And how did she rise to get the President’s ear? That’s the subject of today’s deep-dive.

Editor’s Note

Thanks for reading. If you have thoughts on today’s story, let us know here. We hope you had a nice weekend. We’ll be back tomorrow with a very special edition. We think you’ll love it, see you then.

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