On March 6, far-right internet broadcaster Laura Loomer was at former President Trump’s private Florida beach club, Mar-a-Lago, at a dinner fundraiser for a Republican U.S. Senate candidate. Six days later, Loomer was on various social media platforms promoting “The Great Replacement,” a new documentary focused on a conspiracy theory popular among white nationalists that claims global migration is part of an organized plot to eliminate the white race and western culture. 

“Our once great American culture is being watered down. The arrival of criminal illegal aliens in the millions has led to the fabric of our society being permanently changed, often in negative ways,” Loomer said during a March 12 broadcast on Rumble, a video streaming platform favored by the far right where she debuted a trailer for her documentary  project. “Across the board American values are slowly but surely being eroded, a problem which is only exacerbated by bringing in people who never cared about them in the first place,” she added.

Loomer, who has previously described herself as “pro-white nationalism” and a “proud Islamophobe,” is a Florida activist who mounted unsuccessful U.S. House campaigns as a Republican in 2020 and 2022. She’s also a staunch “Trump loyalist” whose extremist views have not stopped the former president from repeatedly embracing her, including with an endorsement in 2020. 

The extreme position in Loomer’s documentary also, at first, seemed to have an extreme patron. A fundraising webpage for Loomer’s documentary initially indicated a foundation started by one of the country’s most notorious neo-Nazis, Nicholas Fuentes, was involved with the project. Fuentes’ group was scrubbed from the documentary web page following inquiries from TPM and both Loomer and the head of the documentary’s production company, “Truth + Light Media” CEO Edward Szall, described the association with Fuentes as the result of an error. 

“There must be some kind of a, like, a typo because Nick Fuentes is not involved in my film,” Loomer said when first reached by TPM on Thursday morning. 

The fundraising page for the documentary was posted on GiveSendGo, a Christian crowdfunding site popular among extremists. The page originally indicated that Loomer had set up the fundraising campaign and that donations to her documentary “will be received by America First Foundation.” That group was founded in 2020 by Fuentes, who gained notoriety as a college student in 2017 after he participated in the 2017 neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Fuentes subsequently left school and focused on extremist activism. He was involved in the protest against President Trump’s loss that turned violent at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. A prolific streamer, Fuentes has used the n-word, attacked women, warned against “Jewish control” of politics, and praised Hitler, among other things. According to its 2023 year-end report, bringing concerns about the “Great Replacement” into the political discourse is a major goal of Fuentes’ foundation. Fuentes did not respond to a request for comment on this story. 

Loomer, who had shared the page that prominently featured the name of Fuentes’ group, on at least five separate occasions on social media before it was changed, insisted she had not noticed that the foundation was listed there. According to Loomer, the funds are being received by Szall’s company, “Truth + Light Media,” TLM for short. Reached by phone on Thursday, Szall also suggested there had been an “error” and pointed his finger at the fundraising company.

“We’ve spoken with the leadership over at GiveSendGo and the technical team,” Szall said. “It does appear — unfortunately to people who maybe want to write a hit piece about it — that it was just simply an error.”

When pressed on how he and Loomer would not have noticed the mistake, Szall suggested the inquiry from TPM was part of some type of plot. 

“It does smell a little bit of coordination if you don’t mind me speculating,” Szall said.

When asked who he believed was coordinating against him, Szall suggested it was odd TPM was looking at the fundraising page for the documentary at all. 

“I’m not sure,” Szall replied. “It’s a question of why you were perusing a website that no one else was really looking at.”

However, the page was clearly gaining attention as it was being publicized by Loomer in its original form. The GiveSendGo page indicated that over $16,000 was raised for the documentary on the site before the name of Fuentes’ group was removed. The GiveSendGo page was updated to list “TLM Global” as the receiver during TPM’s conversations with Loomer and Szall. In an email to TPM, GiveSendGo co-founder Heather Wilson suggested the problem was “autofill.”

“I went in to take a look at what was going on and can see communication between our support staff and one of Laura’s team members that shows that this was an accidental autofill situation that was not intentional,” Wilson wrote. “The campaign never stated Nick Fuentes as the recipient. Only America First Foundation, which was the error. All the banking information that had been entered was for TLM GLOBAL.”

Wilson further said she was “unaware of any campaign on GiveSendGo associated with Nick Fuentes or the American First Foundation.” TPM followed up to ask how the group could have ended up in an “autofill” in the site if there was no involvement between them. Wilson suggested that error came from the producers of the documentary. 

“It wasn’t a GiveSendGo autofill. It would be dependent on the person creating the campaign and what they have typed on their device in the past. Nothing to do with GiveSendGo or this campaign,” Wilson said. “It is very common, at least for me, for my computer/ or device to think it is smarter than me and fill in something totally unintentional based on something previous. I have some embarrassing stories as most people probably do. LOL”

Despite all of the back-and-forth finger pointing and insistence Fuentes has nothing to do with the documentary, it is clear that Loomer and her associates have plenty of their own ties to the right wing fringe. And none of those hard-line views or ties to extremists have stopped Loomer from being consistently embraced by Trump. 

As she launched her documentary on Rumble, Loomer pointed a finger at those she believed were responsible for white Americans “deliberately being replaced” by immigrants. 

“NGO’s and countries like China and Israel not only encourage people to leave their homes behind to come to America and other European nations … but they also provide them with the means to do so,” said Loomer, adding, “The elites in DC and the EU also encourage our replacements either through apathy or through deliberate policy positions. Some politicians simply don’t care if white America disappears. They really just don’t care.”

As suggested by the film’s title, her documentary pitch was essentially a re-telling of the “great replacement” mythos that has gained traction on the right in the past decade. The idea that global elites are fueling immigration to replace western culture with cheap labor and progressive ideals has been promoted in various forms by higher profile figures, including Vivek Ramaswamy, Tucker Carlson, and Trump. It has also been a core tenet for many white nationalists and neo-Nazis, for whom it dovetails with a belief in the concept of “white genocide.” The theory has been linked to at least four mass shootings that targeted minorities. 

While she made no call for violence, Loomer’s documentary announcement leaned into the more extreme variations of the theory including her naming Jews — citing both Israel and the billionaire financier George Soros — as sources for the phenomenon and by claiming it represented a “genocide.” Loomer, who is herself Jewish, used that fraught term as she asked viewers for donations.

“I will need to raise $100,000 to cover the cost of the operation and the production associated with this documentary film,” Loomer said. “I’m currently working with a team of professional filmmakers to expose this crisis for what it is, an act of genocide and an invasion.”

During her phone call with TPM, when asked why she was comfortable blaming Israel for this “invasion,” Loomer pointed at HIAS, a group that was initially founded as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society during the early 20th century wave of Jewish migration from Eastern Europe. In more recent years, the organization has offered legal aid and mental health services to migrants coming to the U.S. through Central America. Loomer and her allies have specifically criticized HIAS for providing migrants with maps of the region. When pressed in her conversation with TPM, Loomer said she was invoking “Israel” because of the Jewish group rather than any direct evidence of something done by the country. 

“I think that there are a lot of countries that are facilitating this and I would say that, if Israel is not going to call on HIAS to stop importing people as one of the main NGO’s under the guise of Judaism, then yeah, Israel should be named,” Loomer said. 

And while Loomer was insistent that Fuentes was not involved in the documentary, she admitted they “know” each other and she actively refused to denounce him. 

“I’m not going to disavow Nick Fuentes because I believe he has a right to his free speech,” Loomer said. 

There are other far right figures who can be tied to Loomer and her production team. The trailer also indicates that the documentary is focused on time Loomer spent in the Darien Gap region between Colombia and Panama with Michael Yon, a conspiracy theorist and right-wing media personality with links to multiple House Republicans. Yon responded to a request for comment by sharing it on the site formerly known as Twitter where he described it as “creepies messaging.” Yon followed that up by sending TPM an email with false personal attacks. And Szall said his “business partner” at TLM is the far-right activist and failed Delaware U.S. Senate candidate Lauren Witzke. Projects featured on the company’s site include Loomer’s “Unleashed” show and an anti-vaccine doc presented by the overtly anti-semitic online broadcaster Stew Peters. However, both Szall and Loomer suggested Peters, like Fuentes, has taken his rhetoric a bridge too far. 

“They don’t work with Stew Peters anymore,” Loomer said of TLM. “Stew Peters has attacked me for being Jewish and they don’t have a working relationship with Stew Peters anymore.”

Szall said TLM had “severed all ties” with Peters.  

Given the inflammatory nature of her content, far-right figures are natural allies for Loomer. However, her extensive connections on the extreme fringe are notable given Loomer’s links to Trump, whose campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

In addition to endorsing Loomer’s first congressional bid in 2020, Trump — who faced backlash after having dinner with Fuentes in 2022 — has amplified her content on social media on multiple occasions. Last April, Loomer attended a speech Trump delivered at Mar-a-Lago. The New York Times subsequently reported that Trump was considering hiring Loomer “for a campaign role.” According to the newspaper, Trump reversed course after the initial reporting amid concerns from some in his inner circle. While Trump didn’t bring Loomer onto his campaign team, roughly four months later, according to the Washington Post, he “invited her up to his private box” at his golf club in New Jersey and “spent much of the day with her.” Loomer published a video of that encounter that featured Trump lavishing her with praise.

“It’s great to have you and you are very special and you work hard … I appreciate your support and everybody appreciates your support,” Trump said in the clip.

More recently, Trump promoted Loomer and her broadcasts in a pair of posts on his Truth Social platform on March 12. And, on March 6, Loomer was at Mar-a-Lago for a dinner with Jeff Gunter, a dermatologist and Trump donor who was named U.S. ambassador to Iceland while the former president was in office. Gunter is currently running for U.S. Senate in Nevada. Photos posted on Facebook by Al Baldasaro, a former 2020 Trump campaign official and Mar-a-Lago fixture, indicate Trump dropped by the dinner. Loomer posted her own photos and videos of the event which feature her standing and posing alongside Trump and Gunter. Baldasaro’s pictures also show Loomer seated next to Joshua Whitehouse, a former Trump campaign aide who held multiple positions in the former president’s administration. Whitehouse, who did not respond to a request for comment, recently worked on Vivek Ramaswamy’s presidential campaign. In a phone conversation with TPM on Tuesday, Baldasaro said Loomer was acquainted with Gunter. 

“I thought she was very professional, lot of laughs, joking, good personality,” Baldasaro said of Loomer. “She was friends with some of the people at the event and she knew the ambassador.”

Gunter’s campaign press team responded to a request for comment via an email that framed this story as an effort to derail Trump’s re-election bid. 

“Not surprising, President Trump is leading every poll so his allies are being attacked by the fake news,” the email said.

Gunter’s team did not respond to follow up questions asking who the quote could be attributed to or what aspect of reporting his presence at a dinner where he was photographed was “fake.”

One Trump ally who requested anonymity to frankly discuss the former president’s thinking suggested Trump’s ties to Loomer are limited.

“Trump likes her because she’s a nutjob. She goes out, and defends him, and says crazy things,” the Trump ally explained. “It’s not a business relationship, it’s not a political relationship, it’s not a personal relationship. It’s one of these people that trolls other people that Trump encourages them to troll other people.”

The Trump ally also stressed that Loomer’s extreme views on immigration and the “great replacement” are not “guiding” Trump. Instead, they suggested it is the other way around. 

“Have you not been watching Trump? Trump led the charges,” the Trump ally said. “She’s following him. He’s not following her.” 

For her part, Loomer described TPM as a “Soros-funded publication” (it is not) and suggested TPM was trying to create distance between her and Trump through this reporting. Loomer painted a picture of this scenario. 

“You guys are in the business of cancel culture. That’s why you called me with such, like, a, you know, politically charged statement because you’re hoping that, ‘Oh, Laura Loomer is tied to Nick Fuentes, and let’s go take this to the media, and make it so that Donald Trump doesn’t want to have any association with Laura Loomer anymore,’” Loomer said, adding, “I mean, that’s what you’re hoping to do.”

However, TPM responded noting that it didn’t seem like a negative story would get Trump to cut her off. Loomer seemed to concede that point. 

“Yeah, President Trump likes me,” Loomer said.