Welcome back to False Flag! This week, Laura Loomer is becoming an expert on Venezuelan oil production. But is there something else at play? We’d love to have you hop into the comments section to chime in—consider signing up for Bulwark+ today: –Will Is Laura Loomer for Sale?MAGA and MAHA diehards are wondering why the provocateur suddenly cares about Venezuelan oil production.
RIGHT-WING ACTIVIST LAURA LOOMER HAS never had more influence than right now. Her recent hits include successfully purging the National Security Council after meeting with Donald Trump, and helping to oust surgeon general nominee Dr. Janette Nesheiwat. At any moment, she could put the spotlight on another Trump nominee or policy, blasting out unfavorable information to her 1.6 million followers on X. But as she has racked up influence, Loomer has also gained a new set of critics, who charge her with running a modern-day payola scheme—posting about certain topics, and making certain attacks, for the right price. Prominent figures on the right picked up the accusation over the past week after Loomer suddenly became passionate about issues outside of her usual areas, and often in ways that differ from the broader Trump movement. The most recent charges have stemmed around Loomer’s attacks on the president’s replacement surgeon general nominee: “Make America Healthy Again” figure Dr. Casey Means. While Loomer was glad to see Nesheiwat go, she’s been unsparingly critical about Means. And, in typically Loomer fashion, it grew quite vicious, quite quickly. Among other charges, Loomer accused Means of “arguably witchcraft” for a blog post Means once wrote about talking to trees and performing “full moon ceremonies” in a quest to find love. Because Means’s love journey included the use of hallucinogenic mushrooms (which she referred to as “plant experiences,” dropping in a mushroom emoji to make her meaning clear), Loomer accused her of being an illegal drug user. And because Means is pregnant, Loomer said she wasn’t capable of being the surgeon general, quipping, “I would not hire a pregnant woman.” That was all too much for Means’s brother, Calley Means, also a MAHA figure as well as a top RFK Jr. adviser. On Friday, he claimed that he had “received information that Laura Loomer is taking money from industry to scuttle President Trump’s agenda.” Calley Means didn’t elaborate on what information he had received. But he did add some bait to the end of his post, urging Loomer to sue him if she thought he was lying, arguing that his claims could be tested in discovery. “Does President Trump know you and your sister recreationally use Psilocybin?” Loomer shot back, referring to Casey Means’s mention of magic mushrooms. Loomer is far from the only Trump supporter to criticize Means. Several anti-vaccine activists who see the fuzzier “MAHA” push as a distraction from their war on vaccines have also slammed her. And in a text message to me, Loomer said her criticisms were drawn from genuine research and not because she’d taken money for her posts. She added that criticizing Kennedy and his circle is nothing new for her. “These people have provided zero evidence,” Loomer said. “I have been speaking out about Kennedy and his band of Marxists since the campaign cycle.” THE ACCUSATIONS AGAINST LOOMER ARE SOME of the earliest indications of real fissures in the MAGA movement. But they’re also especially divisive because MAHA-land has been roiled by pay-to-play controversies before. In March, conservative influencers suddenly turned against state legislatures’ attempts to restrict food stamps from being used to buy junk food—only for some of the personalities to later admit they were being paid to oppose the legislation. For her part, Loomer has been running her own campaign against MAHA laws at the state level, opposing bans or labeling requirements for artificial dyes and additives. Still, in a world where Donald Trump can crush entire industries with a single executive order or Truth Social message, anyone with substantial business interests would be foolish not to try to win Loomer’s favor somehow. And Loomer has a proven track record as an enthusiastic spokeswoman. After a dog-food company sponsored her online show, Loomer ate the food herself on air. Loomer’s increasing outspokenness on policy issues hasn’t gone unnoticed by her targets. After she warned Republicans that Medicaid cuts would be politically disastrous—an argument that has also been championed by Steve Bannon, among others—one conservative health policy analyst questioned her motives. “One really does wonder what inspired this new-found attention on health policy from a woman who has never once had public thoughts on it,” Jackson Hammond, a policy analyst at the conservative Paragon Health Institute, posted. “Someone should take a look into what hospital lobbyists have been spending their time (and money) on lately.” But the most intriguing example of Loomer standing up for an unexpected cause had nothing to do with health care, MAHA, or the Means siblings. It was, quite randomly, her unexpected advocacy on an extremely niche policy issue affecting Venezuela and oil giant Chevron. The issue centers on a Treasury Department license that allows Chevron to work in Venezuela despite American sanctions. The Trump administration has moved to revoke that license at the end of May, which would force Chevron to abandon its Venezuelan operations as part of an American campaign to pressure Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Out of nowhere, Loomer suddenly became a passionate advocate for allowing Chevron to keep working with Maduro, arguing that requiring Chevron to leave Venezuela would allow China to take over its business in the country. On Thursday, Loomer posted a lengthy op-ed on her website that focused on nitty-gritty oil industry details. The op-ed runs over 1,500 words, and delves into how policy differences could impact daily barrel production. It also uses distinctly non-Loomer language, with phrases like “supplies of diluent needed to process Venezuela’s tar-like crude.” This is not, in other words, the kind of work we’ve come to expect from Loomer. Looking back at Loomer’s X posts about the word “oil” in 2024 reveals a handful of posts mentioning petroleum oil, along with one mention of baby oil found during a federal raid on Sean “Diddy” Combs’s properties, and another post where she asked a health influencer what oil she should use to cook with if regular cooking oil causes cancer. In the past week, on the other hand, Loomer has posted ten times about “oil,” all in connection with the Chevron license to operate in Venezuela. Unusually for a conservative pundit, Loomer has even praised Maduro. “Maduro, despite his flaws, has a deep respect for President Trump,” Loomer wrote in her op-ed. That’s a significant improvement for Maduro’s standing in Loomer’s view. Last July, she said she hoped that Venezuelan opposition protesters would successfully storm the presidential palace and depose him. “I won’t feel sorry for him if he gets the Gaddafi treatment,” she wrote. In less than a year, Loomer has gone from appearing to condone Maduro being tortured and murdered to saying the Trump administration should help oil companies prop up his government. Loomer told me her support for Chevron’s oil license is just part of her broader work against Chinese influence in Latin America. “I’ve been doing this for a long time,” she said in a text message. Chevron didn’t respond to a request for comment. Whatever her motivation, Loomer’s frenetic campaigning on behalf of this and other pet causes has already ruffled plenty of feathers in Trumpworld. On Saturday, Loomer attacked the nomination of Trumpworld defense lawyer Stanley Woodward for a senior Justice Department role. While Woodward has been praised by the likes of Turning Point USA chief Charlie Kirk, Loomer claimed that his wife’s supposed liberal legal work is proof that Woodward can’t be trusted. “No one gives a fuck who his wife is you unserious retard,” replied Arthur Schwartz, a longtime Donald Trump Jr. associate. And on Monday, Loomer was at war again with the Means siblings. This time it came as Politico reported that Peter Gillooly, CEO of the Wellness Company, filed a legal complaint againt Calley Means in part over his reaction to Loomer’s tweets. Gillooly alleges that Calley Means, convinced that Gillooly was behind unflattering leaks to Loomer, threatened to use federal power against the Wellness Company unless Loomer’s critical tweets stopped. Loomer, once more, professed her innocence. “I look up stuff on my own,” she told Politico. You’re a free subscriber to The Bulwark—the largest pro-democracy news and analysis bundle on Substack. 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