Trump Ally Laura Loomer Says Elon Musk Is ‘Silencing’ Her Amid Immigration Spat
MAGA world is fighting, and it’s getting ugly. As Donald Trump supporters raged at Elon Musk for arguing that Big Tech needs to bring in foreign workers, Musk’s X platform apparently removed Trump ally Laura Loomer’s blue checkmark and deactivated her subscriptions.
Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who are set to jointly lead President-elect Donald Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, have both infuriated conservatives in recent days by asserting that Silicon Valley businesses rely on foreign workers because there aren’t enough Americans to do the jobs. Musk wrote on X that there aren’t enough “super motivated” and “super talented engineers” in the United States, while Ramaswamy argued it’s because America’s culture valorizes “hard work over laziness.”
While Musk and Ramaswamy have routinely demonized migrants trying to cross the U.S. border, they both apparently support the H-1B visa program, which companies use to bring in high-skilled foreign workers. Among both the left and right, these visas are viewed as allowing companies to import cheaper, exploitable workers who must keep their jobs if they want to stay in the country.
Loomer was far from the only conservative incensed by Musk’s comments, and she furiously attacked him on X with insults that rival Trump’s. “You bought your way into MAGA 5 minutes ago after Trump almost had his head blown off in Butler,” Loomer wrote.
After Musk said legal immigration was necessary to bring in “the top ~0.1% of engineering talent,” Loomer noted his electric car company Tesla has used H-1B visas to bring in some workers earning roughly $70,000 per year. “Nobody can afford to live off of $70,000 a year in today’s America. Stop crying about declining birth rates when you want us to live like a bunch of welfare queens,” she wrote.
Loomer separately called Musk “a stage 5 clinger who over stayed his welcome at Mar a Lago in an effort to become Trump’s side piece and be the point man for all of his accomplices in big Tech to slither in to Mar a Lago,” Loomer added.
Liberals who dislike Musk were surprised to find themselves taking Loomer’s side. “Okay, I’m agreeing with Laura Loomer & Ann Coulter. I need to just go lie down for a minute,” posted one X user. (Coulter posted Thursday, “American workers can leave a company. Imported H1B workers can’t.”)
Loomer wrote on Thursday that her account verification was taken away, her subscriptions were deactivated, and she no longer has X Premium despite having paid for it. X Premium is a way that users are able to monetize their accounts.
“My voice has been stifled and my reach as a journalist has been restricted because I disagree with the owner of X over an original Trump policy,” Loomer tells Rolling Stone. “We either have free speech for all, or free speech for nobody.”
Gavin Wax, president of the New York Young Republican Club; Owen Shroyer of InfoWars; and Ryan Fournier, chair of Students for Trump, apparently lost their verification badges as well.
Loomer, a far-right conspiracy theorist, is a controversial figure in Trumpland. Her presence around Trump this fall generated negative headlines, particularly when Loomer, a 9/11 truther, accompanied Trump to a 9/11 memorial service. Trump called her a “free spirit” at a press conference, but Loomer soon stopped traveling with Trump.
Loomer was previously banned from Twitter in 2018, before Musk bought the platform and renamed it X, because she called progressive Rep. Ilhan Omar “anti Jewish” and “pro Sharia.” After that happened, she handcuffed herself to the front door of Twitter’s New York City office building for several hours.
“I should be allowed to speak my mind without being restricted,” Loomer tells Rolling Stone. “These are Trump policies and Big Tech can’t just silence every Trump supporter who speaks out about the conflicts of Big Tech infiltration of the Trump admin.”
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