Over the years, the MAGA movement has littered its path with the political carcasses of ambitious women who believed their public self-abasement would insulate them from the inevitable backlash. Karoline Leavitt is out. Sarah Huckabee Sanders was sent running back to Arkansas. Kellyanne Conway and Kayleigh McEnany landed safely at Fox News, the traditional waiting room for Republicans who remain useful to the party but no longer belong in Trump’s orbit. Pam Bondi, Kristi Noem and Marjorie Taylor Greene have all been thrown from the MAGA train in one form or another. SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler and Education Secretary Linda McMahon remain in the Cabinet, but neither occupies the feral, conspiratorial essence that Trump has increasingly made central to his movement. Every one of these women hitched her identity to Trump’s approval and every one of them eventually discovered what that approval is actually worth.
Loyalty has never been a two-way street for Trump. In his political universe, women are routinely promoted as avatars of showy devotion. No matter how badly they savage his enemies or how well they carry out his agenda, they are discarded if they show the faintest sign of becoming a rival source of authority. Laura Loomer is MAGA’s last woman standing because she has mastered Trump’s most prized political currency without crossing him. She is the ultimate manifestation of a political culture that rewards cruelty, bigotry and unhinged performance art above all else.
