Antonia Hitchens

The sort of foundational conspiracy that first drew Loomer in to Trump and her description was that he was, as she puts it, one of the first people to call out that Obama was not born in America and thus should not have been president.

And that started out for her the sense of being in a conversation or dialogue with Donald Trump, even before she had had the occasion to ever meet him, just watching him on Fox growing up.

She was drawn to his conspiracy that

Barack Obama was born outside of America.

And that kind of begins for her the sense that there are other, you know, factually loose statements he makes and that she echoes that are really brought into the mainstream.

Sure.

So I think we consider Laura Loomer now someone who exists very much online, very much on screens.

But there was a time where, you know, she was banned from pretty much any site that would let her post for many years.

And so during that time, she describes having almost a break with reality where she was driven so insane by not being able to access the Internet that she could only protest in person.

She often would carry a bullhorn with her, kind of trying to get more attention from people.

In one case, after her ban from Twitter came down, they considered her, I think, a dangerous individual who was...

spreading hateful conduct, she goes to Twitter's offices in New York and chains herself to the door with her bullhorn and remains there screaming for a few hours until police cut through her handcuffs and remove her.

And I think for many people, that was the first time that they sort of became just even vaguely aware of this person on their radar.

For others, it was when she stormed the production of Julius Caesar being put on in Central Park.

And at that time, Donald Trump was being used as a likeness for Julius Caesar.

And she felt that that was going to open up the question of political violence and whether or not, as she puts it, you know, were liberals then going to be tempted to

try to assassinate the president by seeing a likeness of him stabbed on stage.

So she storms the stage, interrupts the production, and tries to kind of make the point that she is already protecting this person.

And then in another instance, she, having been banned from Facebook, having read also Sheryl Sandberg's memoir, Lean In,

She goes to the Facebook offices in California and sort of tries to insinuate herself into their workplace environment saying, you know, I'm leaning in.