Laura Loomer testified that Bill Maher's joke about her sleeping with Trump torpedoed her chance at White House job

Yahoo

10 hours ago

MAGA extremist Laura Loomer recently testified in her $150 million defamation lawsuit against Bill Maher that the HBO star's joke about her sleeping with Donald Trump ended up costing her a position at the White House because of the 'media frenzy' it created.
Loomer, the self-annointed Trump 'loyalty' enforcer whose influence with the president has seemingly risen in recent months, sat down for a deposition last week with HBO's attorney. And, as Puck reported, it quickly became 'every bit as unhinged as one might expect.'
The lawsuit, which Loomer filed in October of last year, centers on a September 2024 episode of Real Time where the comic suggested that Loomer's sudden ascendance in Trump's orbit was due to the two of them engaging in a sexual liaison.
'I think maybe Laura Loomer's in an arranged relationship to affect the election because she's very close to Trump. She's 31, looks like his type,' Maher quipped. 'We did an editorial here a few years ago… it was basically, who's Trump f***ing? Because I said, you know, it's not nobody. He's been a dog for too long, and it's not Melania. I think we may have our answer this week. I think it might be Laura Loomer.'
In her complaint, Loomer alleges that she was subjected to 'unjustified ridicule, embarrassment, loss of reputation and professional opportunity, as well as being damaged financially' by the joke, adding that the comments were 'false, malicious and defamatory.' She also claimed that Maher denied her request for a public apology and an invitation on his show to 'mitigate prior and any further damage.'
Maher's joke, meanwhile, came days after Loomer accompanied the then-candidate to a presidential debate and events commemorating the 9/11 attacks, prompting concerns from advisers and allies about her unofficial campaign role. During the final days of the campaign, he would publicly distance himself from her, all while promising his aides that he'd stop regularly inviting her on his flights.
During her deposition, which was briefly on the public docket last week before being sealed by Magistrate Judge Philip Lammens, Loomer looked to make the case that she would currently be working in the White House if it weren't for Maher.
Throughout the questioning from attorney Kate Bolger, Loomer boasted about her increasing clout with the president, stating that he first became impressed with her adversarial 'reporting' on GOP presidential rival Ron DeSantis in 2023.
Loomer noted that she would soon be invited to Mar-a-Lago and that Trump told Susie Wiles, his current White House chief of staff, to immediately hire her. Instead, Loomer stated, that didn't happen because the news was leaked to the New York Times, which reported that her hiring 'would cause a backlash, given her history of inflammatory statements and her embrace of the Republican Party's fringes.' The Times later appended the story to point out its reporting had 'ignited a firestorm' among the MAGA base and resulted in Trump backing off.
Still, according to Loomer, she continued to enjoy access in Trumpworld and estimated that she'd visited Mar-a-Lago at least '20,30 times,' flew around with Trump, and submitted a resume for an administration job. She also recalled that on the flight to Trump's debate with Kamala Harris in Philadelphia, she showed him what she said was a police report after he asked if the rumors about Haitian immigrants in Ohio were real, leading to the infamous 'eating dogs' moment.
Bolger, meanwhile, pressed Loomer on why she was so certain it was Maher's joke – which came days after the debate – that doomed her job prospects with the president.
'Other than Bill Maher, can you name a single human being on all of Planet Earth that believes what Bill Maher said?' Bolger asked, prompting Loomer to respond: 'It's up for interpretation.'
Loomer went on to say that Trump campaign manager Chris LaCivita would later tell her she wasn't welcome back on Trump's plane because of the 'media frenzy' the HBO host's joke had sparked.
Elsewhere in the deposition, Bolger brought up the lengthy history of inflammatory commentary from Loomer, a self-described 'proud Islamophobe' who has made numerous accusations about the personal lives of other prominent political figures. This could have potentially been an effort to establish that Maher's one-off line about Loomer wouldn't have done any meaningful reputational damage to the far-right provocateur.
That did lead Loomer to bring up her ongoing feud with fellow MAGA firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene, whom Loomer accused of being 'very jealous of me' and not well-liked by Trump's staff.
Naturally, a sitdown with Loomer wouldn't be complete without a nasty swipe, which Bolger received when the plaintiff took aim at her past representation of Disney in the ABC News lawsuit that was settled with Trump. 'I'm not going to be gaslit by a Democratic lawyer who represents fake news media,' Loomer fumed.
While Loomer may not have a White House job, and the six-figure salary that comes with it, she has been patting herself on the back lately over the amount of influence she supposedly wields with the president.
Claiming to have played an outsized role in the abrupt firings of more than a dozen high-ranking administration officials over what she says is insufficient loyalty to the president, who she has repeatedly declared her 'love' for, Loomer recently joked that one of her friends now calls her 'Trump's Rasputin.'