Somehow, Laura Loomer has more staying power with the Trump White House than she did when she literally handcuffed herself to Twitter’s doors. The far-right conspiracy theorist, fresh off of reportedly using her influence to force National Security Adviser Mike Waltz out of the administration, is trying to throw her weight around to oust Trump’s Surgeon General Nominee, Janette Nesheiwat, for not being sufficiently anti-vaccine, per The Daily Beast.
Loomer has taken aim at Nesheiwat over her support for the covid-19 vaccine, taking issue with her support for the shot that saved an estimated 2.4 million lives and for calling vaccine hesitancy a “global health threat.”
Loomer, who claims without any evidence or hint that she has even a single toe still touching reality that the Covid vaccine is “now killing millions of people,” said that Nesheiwat is “not being ideologically aligned with Donald Trump or his admin’s health initiatives.” She also called Nesheiwat a “a pro-COVID vaccine nepo appointee” and called for Trump to ditch her in favor of a nominee “more aligned with personal liberties.”
Now, Loomer may be right about one thing: Nesheiwat probably should be replaced as the pick for Surgeon General. But that has less to do with her position on vaccines, which seem pretty reasonable when compared to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s recent claims that the Measles, Mumps, and Rubella vaccine contains “fetus debris,” and more to do with the fact that she seems to have fabricated parts of her background.
Last month, independent journalist Anthony Clark broke the story that Nesheiwat has, for years, claimed to have received her MD from the University of Arkansas Medical Sciences when she did not actually attend the school. Per Clark’s reporting, Nesheiwat completed a family medicine residency at a regional campus associated with the school. Her degree is from the American University of the Caribbean, a for-profit school that, at the time Nesheiwat would have attended, was likely primarily attended by students rejected for admission by traditional medical schools.
Loomer is on something of a “right for the wrong reasons” streak lately. In addition to opposing Nesheiwat not for her fudged credentials but instead for her pro-vaccine positions, Loomer also recently took credit for the ousting of Trump National Security Advisor Mike Waltz—not because he added a journalist to a Signal group chat where war plans were being shared, but because his deputy, Alex Wong, is the son of Chinese immigrants and she believed he was advancing Chinese interests over America.
The fact that Loomer—a 9/11 truther who has outwardly supported the creation of a white ethnostate and has views so extreme that Marjorie Taylor Greene of all people has called her “mentally unstable and a documented liar”—has any voice within the White House is troubling. The fact that she seems to have a particularly loud one that also happens to land directly on the President’s ear likely means the madness won’t stop any time soon.
