When Laura Loomer co-starred in a (terrible) documentary film

Five years before she became Donald Trump's traveling companion, Loomer appeared in 'Importing Ilhan,' a genuinely terrible short documentary about her visit to Minnesota.

Laura Loomer, outside of Ilhan Omar’s “house,” in the 2019 documentary short “Importing Ilhan”

Against all odds, Laura Loomer emerged last week as the main character in the 2024 presidential race. The social media gadfly and sometime Congressional candidate, who has been banned from every major social media platform — as well as Uber, Lyft, and UberEats — was spotted on Donald Trump’s campaign plane before the presidential debate. The next day, she was spotted with the president at 9/11 memorial commemorations, despite flirting in the past with 9/11 trutherism.

Loomer is known as a particularly unhinged conspiracy theorist, a huge racist, and an Islamophobe — those rideshare bans happened when she demanded a non-Muslim driver — and someone who’s just all around not a bright individual. This is someone who once thought a jokey Wi-Fi network called “FBI Surveillance Van” was spying on her and who once handcuffed herself to only one of a pair of double doors at Twitter’s headquarters.

Last year, Trump loyalists moved to scuttle his plans to hire Loomer for the campaign, and now other Trumpers are worried Loomer will cost him key states. Marjorie Taylor Greene, of all people, has distanced herself from Loomer, on the grounds of racial prejudice. When Sen. Lindsey Graham denounced Loomer last week, she called him gay.

To list all of the ridiculous, stupid, indefensible things Laura Loomer has said and done over the years would take tens of thousands of words, and that any presidential campaign would have anything to do with such a ridiculous figure is a massive indictment of that candidate and our politics in general.

But because this is a movie newsletter, I want to revisit an oft-forgotten aspect of Loomer Lore: The time in 2019 when she co-starred in a short documentary in my original hometown of Minneapolis. Say what you will about Loomer and the film — both are embarrassingly bad — but give her this: She’s in a better place right now than where her two collaborators ended up.

Importing Ilhan was a 25-minute documentary released in June of 2019, which featured Loomer and her fellow conspiracy theorist, Jacob Wohl, paying a visit to Minneapolis to “investigate” Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), and specifically the oft-stated but never proven rumor that Omar once committed immigration fraud by marrying her brother. The film, directed by Ali Alexander — more on him later — remains live on YouTube: