MAGA conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer identified NPR’s Danielle Kurtzleben as the reporter who mistakenly hit President Donald Trump in the face with a boom mic during a press conference last week, suggesting she did it on purpose.
“She is the newly appointed White House reporter for @NPR and a massive Trump hater and LGBTQ advocate who once suggested during the 2024 campaign that Trump only spoke in Howell, Michigan because it has ties to the KKK,” Loomer said on X Sunday.
“Did she hit President Trump in the face on purpose?” Loomer speculated.
To back up her claim, Loomer posted a photograph of journalists assembled at the airbase, with one person circled, alongside screenshots of Kurtzleben’s X profile and a video clip of Kurtzleben on television in which she points out that “Howell has historic links to the Ku Klux clan and was the site of a white supremacist demonstration last year.”
The Daily Beast has contacted NPR for comment.
Kurtzleben locked her X account less than 20 minutes after Loomer’s exposé, the conservative media figure claimed.
Loomer—who describes herself as an “investigative journalist” on social media—is known as a regular purveyor of right-wing conspiracies, including that mass shootings in Parkland, Florida, and Santa Fe, Texas, were staged and that 9/11 was “an inside job.”
Loomer was quick to portray the mishap as intentional—despite the fact that the reporter who struck Trump immediately apologized.
“I don’t think the mic in Trump’s face was an accident,” Loomer said in another post on X.
Loomer claimed Kurtzleben is a “Kamala Harris supporter” based on a story Kurtzleben wrote that said the 2024 Democratic presidential candidate beat Trump in a debate in September last year.
Loomer further even directed her ire at the administration for allowing reporters to get close to the president.
“Why did the White House allow this woman to get so close to President Trump with a microphone that could be used as a weapon?” Loomer wrote.
Loomer’s post, meanwhile, has caused a MAGA pile-on directed at Kurtzleben, with dozens of conservative X profiles resharing her remarks and disparaging the reporter. One X account suggested that the journalist could face charges for “assault on the president.”
“If intent to kill or seriously injure is proven, penalties could escalate to life imprisonment or the death penalty (extremely rare and requiring substantial evidence),” one X user wrote.
Another profile urged the president’s “security men to detain her for questioning.”
“It’s a form of intentional assault she needs to be arrested and it was on our President of the United States,” the poster added.
One person even suggested Kurtzleben “tried to kill” the president.
