“I make a mean chicken curry,” Republican vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance told an NBC News reporter today. Vance was asked about a post on X/Twitter that the White House would smell of curry if Democrat Kamala Harris is elected president. Vance’s wife, Usha Vance, is Indian, with her parents being immigrants from Andhra Pradesh, India.
This was the post on X, by Laura Loomer last week: “If @KamalaHarris wins, the White House will smell like curry.” Loomer added, apparently referring to customer service operations outsourced to India by American companies, that “White House speeches will be facilitated via a call centre 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.”
Loomer was responding to Vice President Harris’s post on X that, “As a young girl visiting my grandparents in [Chennai, Tamil Nadu] India, my grandfather took me on his morning walks, where he would discuss the importance of fighting for equality and fighting corruption. He was a retired civil servant who had been part of the movement to win India’s independence. My grandmother traveled across India – bullhorn in hand – to speak with women about accessing birth control.”
The post by Harris, the Democratic candidate for US president, has got 4.2 million views. Some Tamilians, like Harris’s grandparents, are vegetarians.
Loomer’s post has got 6.5 million views. She describes herself on X as an “investigative journalist” and a “free spirit.” She worked as an activist for Project Veritas and Alex Jones's Infowars. Loomer, 31 years old, was born in Arizona. In 2020, she ran, with Trump’s support, as a Republican candidate for the US House of Representatives from a seat in Florida. She lost to Democrat Lois Frankel. In 2022, she unsuccessfully tried to unseat Representative Daniel Webster in a Republican primary in a different Florida Congressional district.
Now Loomer is known for promoting a long string of conspiracy theories including false claims that President Joe Biden was near death this summer, that Vice President Kamala Harris is not Black, and according to the BBC, that the son of billionaire George Soros was sending cryptic messages calling for Trump's assassination. Last year, Loomer shared a video on X which claimed that the 9/11 attacks were an "inside job," NPR reported.
Such posts led Loomer to being banned from Facebook, Instagram and even, according to her, Uber and Lyft for making offensive comments about Muslim drivers.
Loomer posted on X that she is working “independently" to help Trump, who she referred to as "truly our nation's last hope." She has about 1.3 million followers on the platform.
Trump himself has levelled a series of racist and sexist attacks against Harris, playing on tropes about women and Black people by calling her "weak," "dumb as a rock" and "lazy", according to Reuters.
Last week, Loomer flew on Trump’s plane to attend his presidential debate against Harris in Philadelphia. The next day, Loomer was also part of Trump’s team which attended events in New York commemorating the 9/11 terrorist attack.
When asked about Loomer’s conspiracy theories at a press conference, Trump said she has “been a supporter of mine. She speaks positively of the campaign […] I don’t control Laura […] a strong person” with “strong opinions.”
Later in a post on Truth Social, the social media platform of which he is a majority owner, Trump wrote that “Laura Loomer doesn’t work for the Campaign. She’s a private citizen and longtime supporter. I disagree with the statements she made but, like the many millions of people who support me, she is tired of watching the Radical Left Marxists and Fascists violently attack and smear me.”
Responding to Loomer’s post on smell of curry in the White House, Akhsat ‘AB’ Bhatia stated on X, “I am conservative die heart Trump supporter and I agree on most of your posts but I feel like this is an unnecessary racial post on thousands of conservative Indian Trump supporters. This is how you turn conservative Indian Trump supporters to liberal democrats.” Bhatia states that he is a candidate for Mayor of Irvine, California.
Meanwhile, Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance faces attacks from some Trump supporters for marrying an Indian. Vance “has an Indian wife and a kid named Vivek. All his kids have Indian names – so it’s like, what exactly are we getting here?” Nick Fuentes, a right-wing influencer said in a podcast in July, after Trump picked Vance as his vice presidential nominee. “White people are being systematically replaced in America and in Europe through immigration and – to a much-lesser extent – due to intermarrying.” The podcast has got more than 2.9 million views on X.
In a livestream broadcast on Rumble, Fuentes said “As a real conservative, as a real right-wing American” he is not leaving his house to vote for Trump. “Vote for what? For JD Vance and Usha.” Fuentes is a White Supremacist who met with Trump at his home in Florida in November 2022, The Post reported.
While Trump already has a history of associating with racists, antisemites and conspiracy theorists, some Republicans have recently voiced concerns about Loomer and her past statements, NPR reported.
Loomer is “a crazy conspiracy theorist who regularly utters disgusting garbage intended to divide Republicans,” Thom Tillis, Republican Senator from North Carolina, posted on X. A plant by the Democratic Party, Tillis added, “couldn’t do a better job than she is doing to hurt President Trump’s chances of winning re-election. Enough.”
Ro Khanna, a Democrat who represents part of California’s Silicon Valley area in the U.S. Congress, posted on X: “I am actually looking forward to having masala chai at the White House when we have Madam President Harris. It's delicious. You should try some.”
Ignatius Chithelen is the author of Passage from India to America and Six Degrees of Education. This piece was first published in the Global Indian Times, and is reproduced here with permission.
