Photo: Mark Peterson/Redux

Most people in political life have role models from the past that they venerate or imitate. Donald Trump, for example, is a big fan of former presidents Andrew Jackson and William McKinley. Some of his MAGA acolytes love Richard Nixon. Lots of Democrats burn candles, literally or figuratively, to the memories of FDR, JFK, RFK (the senior, not the junior) and such quasi-political titans as Martin Luther King Jr.

In an interview with the Atlantic’s Michael Scherer, the notorious MAGA influencer (or perhaps more specifically, Trump-whisperer) Laura Loomer identified an unusual hero who may help inspire her career: Joseph R. McCarthy.

I suggested at one point that her effort to get federal employees fired for supposed disloyalty to Trump recalled the Red Scare of the early 1950s, when Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin exploited the private musings and personal associations of alleged communist sympathizers to end their careers. She loved that.

“Joseph McCarthy was right,” Loomer responded without missing a beat. “We need to make McCarthy great again.”

Loomer may have been kidding; her whole act could be described as having a deadly serious core wrapped in candy-coated trolling. But maybe she wasn’t. Despite his censure by a Republican-controlled Senate and his malodorous reputation as a bully and a demagogue, McCarthy has never lost the allegiance of a significant segment of conservatives who either believe his poorly documented charges of massive communist infiltration of U.S. government or simply admire his “populist” willingness to attack bipartisan elites. There are also some tangible connections between his cause and Loomer’s thanks to Trump’s close relationship with McCarthy aide (and later New York superlawyer) Roy Cohn and the 47th president’s zest for conspiracy theories.

But what’s really fascinating to think about is that Loomer may be as powerful as McCarthy ever was. As Scherer notes, while she’s had her ups and downs in a relatively brief career, she’s having quite a run in 2025:

In just the first seven months of Trump’s second presidency, she successfully lobbied Trump to end Secret Service protection for Joe Biden’s children. She has pushed the president to fire six members of his National Security Council, remove three leaders at the National Security Agency, end an academic appointment at West Point, fire the director of the National Vetting Center at the Department of Homeland Security, dispatch an assistant U.S. attorney in California, and remove a federal prosecutor in Manhattan. After Trump’s intel chief stripped 37 current and former national-security officials of their security clearance Wednesday, she claimed credit for first labeling 29 of them as threats to Trump.

Loomer has exercised all this pull and become a global celebrity (with a huge social-media and podcast audience) and an adviser to the president of the United States without trudging up the political ladder like McCarthy did. McCarthy was elected to a local judgeship before serving in World War II, upsetting an incumbent U.S. senator in a GOP primary in 1946, and then winning two general elections. Loomer has twice run unsuccessfully for Congress. McCarthy built his national presence through grueling campaign work for Republicans and years of committee hearings in the Senate. Loomer just needs a well-placed tweet or quote — or a private conversation with her White House friends — to change the course of events and demonstrate her power.

The big question at the moment is whether Loomer could experience a fall from grace and power as precipitous and complete as McCarthy, who faded into political irrelevance after his censure (and then reportedly drank himself to death). By most accounts, McCarthy’s trajectory decisively changed when he began training his fire on Republicans rather than Democrats, for the obvious reason that the Eisenhower administration replaced the Truman administration when Ike took office with Joe’s active assistance. The term “deep state” didn’t exist back then, but McCarthy played on perceptions that there was a permanent bipartisan foreign-policy Establishment riddled with communists who didn’t just go away with a change of party management. As an article in the National Archives concludes, Ike was the secret assassin of McCarthy’s career:

Former President Harry S. Truman openly denounced McCarthy for three years, but his rhetorical attacks only enhanced the senator’s prestige; Ike ruined him in less than half that time.

[O]n August 31, 1953, McCarthy launched hearings into communist infiltration into the United States Army—Ike’s Army. While Eisenhower did not respond in public, it was only a matter of time. Joe McCarthy had signed his own political death warrant by assaulting the service to which the general had devoted his adult life.

Much more obviously than McCarthy, Loomer owes absolutely everything to her president, and there’s not much question she has to remain in his good graces to survive, much less thrive. Yet she has flirted with great danger in recent months by going after some fellow Trump acolytes, as Scherer notes:

She has no problem going after Republican targets. She has publicly accused Senator Lindsey Graham of being gay, which he denies, and called the podcaster Tucker Carlson a “fraud” and a “terrible person.” Loomer let loose on [Marjorie Taylor] Greene, claiming without evidence that she committed obscene acts in CrossFit gyms. (She did link to a Daily Mail article that had suggested, based on anonymous sources, that the congresswoman had extramarital affairs with people she knew through her gym.)

But even though she almost certainly has enemies in Trump’s inner circle who resent her influence, she keeps registering wins. Just last week, she trained her fire on an aide to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., suggesting the aide was quietly preparing a 2028 presidential run for her boss. Loomer didn’t immediately bag her trophy but did accomplish something arguably more important: a statement from Kennedy ruling out a future presidential bid.

The incident suggests that Loomer has plans for influencing the MAGA movement and the GOP even after Trump goes back to Mar-a-Lago for good, which is precisely what she accuses some of her targets of doing:

She speaks of the White House overall as a self-dealing den of duplicity, where staff regularly conspire against the president she adores.

“Everyone is positioning themselves for a post-Trump GOP,” she told me, adding that Trump is often surprised by what she tells him about his own administration. “Every time I have these briefings, he looks at his staff and says, ‘How come you didn’t tell me this?’”

Maybe Trump truly believes Loomer has no motives beyond intense personal loyalty to him and his legacy. But Trump is justly famous for discarding anyone who begins imagining themselves indispensable. Joe McCarthy arguably elevated his anti-communist principles above loyalty to party and president and got fatally burned. Loomer would be wise to reject his example in that crucial respect.

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