Far-right activist Laura Loomer claims she was suspended on X by Elon Musk
Far-right activist Laura Loomer said she was suspended for 12 hours on X following a clash with its billionaire owner Elon Musk and the MAGA base over highly skilled foreign workers.
Loomer said in a post Friday afternoon that she was temporarily booted from the social media site for “raising concerns and speaking the truth about the technocratic takeover of our country and the White House.”
“How can you call yourself a ‘free speech absolutist’ and then punish someone by restricting their speech?” Loomer wrote. “We need to have an honest conversation about Big Tech influence over MAGA.”
Loomer said X also removed her blue checkmark and deactivated her subscriptions. Users can get paid by X for their posts by offering subscriptions to their feeds but the content must be in compliance with X’s rules, which Loomer violated, according to her post.
The online brawl started after Loomer criticized President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for artificial intelligence adviser — Sriram Krishnan, a former partner at venture capitalist firm Andreessen Horowitz who was born in India. Loomer took issue with Krishnan’s previous support for allowing more highly-skilled immigrants to enter the United States. She later fired off a slew of posts at Musk alongside claims that highly-skilled immigrants don’t have “running water or toilet paper.”
Loomer was previously banned from several social media sites in 2020, before Musk owned the platform. She has a history of spreading far-right conspiracy theories and anti-immigrant views. Loomer has a direct line to Trump and traveled with him to a presidential debate in September.
Musk, who poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Trump’s reelection, bought the social media company then known as Twitter in 2022, in part because he said the company blocked users too aggressively. Part of his mission with controlling the platform, he said at the time, was to foster a space for free speech and open debate.
Trump himself has yet to weigh in as the online rift has boiled over into the public view, though a spokesperson for his transition team pointed to an X post written by incoming White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller that cited a 2020 speech from Trump about American innovation.
But the brouhaha between Trump’s backers in Silicon Valley and the anti-immigrant MAGA base reflects some key challenges for today’s Republican Party: the coalition that helped give Trump a second term won’t always get along.
Musk has not commented directly on Loomer’s suspension, but he posted “a reminder” that the algorithm automatically minimizes the reach of a user if they’re repeatedly blocked or muted by other credible accounts.
“Loomer is trolling for attention. Ignore.” Musk wrote on X.