Books

The Grifters Are Coming: Laura Loomer, Louise Mensch, Sheriff David Clarke All Shopping New Books

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The Trump era is the golden age of grift, both for the Trumpist right and the #Resistance left. Some of the internet’s most infamous hucksters now want to sell you their books.

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Photo Illustration by Lyne Lucien/The Daily Beast

Some of the most outspoken political grifters of the Trump era want to sell you books—if anyone is interested in buying.

The success of political commentary books like Fox News reporter-turned-Trump-booster Greg Jarrett’s The Russia Hoax and tell-alls like Omarosa’s Unhinged have inspired B-list political media celebrities to take time out of their tweetstorms and attention-starved antics to pen the next great American rant.

Multiple sources confirmed to The Daily Beast that far-right political activist Laura Loomer, for example, has been trying to shop a book, and has told associates that there may be interest from major publishers.

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Loomer receiving a book deal from a mainstream publisher would be especially strange. The former Project Veritas operative is most famous for unhinged antics like storming onstage during an outdoor production of Julius Caesar to support President Trump and handcuffing herself to the door of Twitter’s New York headquarters. She has become a controversial figure on the right.

Loomer has been booted from a number of tech platforms over the past several years—including Twitter, PayPal, Venmo, Gofundme, Uber, Uber Eats, and Lyft—after making anti-Muslim remarks, including calling for Muslims to be barred from some ride-share services. Last week, she was barred from reentering the Conservative Political Action Conference after she and her team repeatedly heckled various reporters, including one from The Daily Beast, about her recent ban from various social media platforms.

“I am writing a book and met with some very large publishers in DC this weekend,” Loomer told The Daily Beast. “I have a lot of very serious offers on the table and will be making some big announcements soon. The people just can’t get enough of people getting Loomered. It’s a huge hit and I predict my book will be a bestseller.”

Loomer isn’t the only inflammatory right-wing personality trying to pitch publishers on a book idea.

According to one well-connected publishing source, former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke has also been taking the temperature from publishers on interest in a follow-up to his 2017 book Cop Under Fire: Moving Beyond Hashtags of Race, Crime & Politics for a Better America.

Clarke is perhaps most famous for his frequent Fox News appearances, in which he typically donned a ten-gallon hat and spouted off firebrand right-wing politics, like comparing Black Lives Matter to ISIS. He became something of a conservative celebrity and was briefly under consideration for a Trump administration job, despite a scandal surrounding the deaths of multiple inmates—including a baby—in the county jail he oversaw.

The pursuit of a book deal isn’t exclusive to grifters of the far right, however. At least one major anti-Trump movement hanger-on is also hoping a publisher will publish her work.

Undeterred or unaware of the less-than-overwhelming book sales of #Resistance Twitter personality Seth Abramson’s book expanding on his conspiratorial tweets, Louise Mensch, a Brexit advocate and former Conservative member of parliament in the U.K., is shopping her own book on Trump and Russia that would allegedly contain some original reporting, multiple sources said.

It’s unclear, though, what kind of reported details would be in the book, or which publishers would want to buy it.

Mensch is notorious for often making wild, unverified, and conspiratorial claims, including that Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, and former House Speaker Paul Ryan were going to be charged with racketeering; that Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) was set to take over the presidency from Trump; and that Steve Bannon was being charged with espionage and would face the death penalty.

Mensch and Clarke did not immediately respond to requests for comment.