By Phil Stewart
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Far-right activist Laura Loomer slammed President Donald Trump’s administration on Friday over its deepening defense ties with Qatar and made false accusations that spread on social media that the Pentagon was giving it a military base on U.S. soil.
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth met with Qatar’s Deputy Prime Minister Sheikh Saoud bin Abdulrahman al-Thani at the Pentagon earlier in the day, announcing that Qatar would pay for a facility at a U.S. air base in Idaho. He did not say the U.S. would give Qatar the base, or any base in the United States.
The facility, which has been in discussions for years, would support Qatar’s plans to train pilots on 12 F-15 fighter jets that the country is buying and which would be located there, a U.S. official told Reuters. The facility would include hangars to shield the aircraft from the elements and a squadron operations building for the pilots, the official said.
U.S. TO SUPERVISE CONSTRUCTION
The arrangement, which the official said was in line with those agreed with other U.S. allies, would result in the facility being built by local contractors under U.S. military supervision and funded by Qatar. Pilots from Singapore already train at the U.S. base.
“We’re signing a letter of acceptance to build a Qatar Emiri Air Force facility at the Mountain Home Air Base in Idaho,” Hegseth said, alongside his Qatari counterpart.
Shortly after the announcement, Loomer said she did not think she would vote in next year’s mid-term elections.
“Never thought I’d see Republicans give terror financing Muslims from Qatar a MILITARY BASE on US soil so they can murder Americans,” Loomer wrote on X.
She posted a clip of Trump speaking in 2017, when he accused Qatar of historically funding terrorism “at a very high level.”
In the wake of her remarks, Hegseth posted on X: “To be clear, Qatar will not have their own base in the United States —nor anything like a base. We control the existing base, like we do with all partners.”
Qatar’s embassy also denied there would be a Qatari air base.
Qatar is a U.S. security partner and host to al-Udeid Air Base, the largest U.S. military facility in the Middle East. It acted as a mediator alongside Egypt in talks between Israel and Hamas.
A self-proclaimed “Islamophobe” who for years argued the September 11, 2001, attacks were an inside job, Loomer has a history of provocative and self-promotional actions, including handcuffing herself to Twitter’s headquarters in New York in 2018 after the platform banned her for hate speech.
With 1.8 million followers on X and her own weekly program that draws a large audience, Loomer can say she speaks for many of the MAGA faithful and influences their views of the Trump administration.
In April, Trump fired U.S. General Timothy Haugh, who was the director of the National Security Agency and head of U.S. Cyber Command. The New York Times reported that Loomer had called for his ouster.
(Reporting by Phil StewartEditing by Rod Nickel)
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