By Mayank Chhaya
It is no breaking news that former President Donald Trump, who himself flirts with racism frequently, keeps racist or racist-adjacent company. Currently, someone who is looming large on his campaign is right-wing extremist Laura Loomer.
Loomer is an undisguised race-baiter whose latest endeavor has been to target Vice President Kamala Harris’s Indian heritage, particularly her food.
In a recent post on X, Loomer said, “If @KamalaHarris wins, the White House will smell like curry and White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center and the American people will only be able to convey their feedback through a customer satisfaction survey at the end of the call that nobody will understand.”
In that one post, Loomer’s racist prejudice was so obvious that even Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican Representative no stranger to her own brand of extreme right wing views of the world, was offended by it. She responded to Loomer saying, “This is appalling and extremely racist. It does not represent who we are as Republicans or MAGA. This does not represent President Trump. This type of behavior should be tolerated ever. @LauraLoomer should take this down.”
In trying to separate Trump from Loomer Greene was merely offering a distinction without a difference since the former president himself has regularly disparaged people for their ethnic background. He was the one who recently said of Harris, “She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn’t know she was Black, until a number of years ago, when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black. So I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black? I respect either one, but she obviously doesn’t.”
Loomer is not an exception in the Trump world but rather the norm taking cue from the man at the top. Her X post was sweeping in its racist underpinnings mocking not just Indian food but even the way Indians in India talk. Invoking call center accents as a racist trope is quite common but given Loomer’s track record and considering that she coupled that with the Indian curry was clearly transgressing the line of civil discourse. Greene’s contention that what Loomer said does not represent Trump and MAGA (Make America Great Again movement) is a stretch because in many ways it does.
Greene told Manu Raju of CNN, “This is such an important election. I don’t think she (Loomer) has the experience or the right mentality to advise a very important presidential election.” Once again, the faithful among the Trump world would argue exactly to the contrary because Loomer is precisely the kind of company he likes and encourages. She travels with the former president on his personal aircraft and is regularly seen next to him.
CNN quoted Loomer as saying of the offensive post, “It’s interesting how the media wants to, once again, falsely accuse me of being a racist. This is a woman who is on video cooking Indian food with Indian celebrities talking about how she likes cooking with curry.” Objectively, the Indian curries do smell strong but then every food on the planet smells. That is a consequence of the chemical interplay between raw materials and seasoning. Smelling is not unique to Indian curries.
It is a measure of the depths that the Trump campaign is willing to plumb that everything is fair game for its functionaries, including mocking their rival’s ethnic preferences.
