How I became the “Manhattan Liberal Elite” Laura Loomer warned you about
Like any good libertarian, I have long been a big fan of Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie, the only sitting member of Congress who voted against every sanctions resolution and every new war. I had met him a few times in the past, at the Libertarian National Convention, at Freedom Fest, and at a couple of his campaign fundraisers in NYC over the years.
In August 2025, Massie ventured to Manhattan for a private fundraising event in Midtown, in a conference room in Midtown. I made a small donation of $500 to attend the event, because he has always been my favorite Congressman, and at the event he described his plans to push for the release of the Epstein Files which had become a top issue in the country by this point in time.
Anyway, I didn’t think much about it, other than really wishing Congressman Massie good luck in his campaign for reelection to the House of Representatives.
Chaos on the Columbia campus
Meanwhile in 2024 and 2025, protests on Columbia University’s downtown campus (Morningside Heights – I suppose only people at the Columbia University Medical Center think of 116th Street as “downtown”) were “raging” over the conflict in Gaza with pro-Palestinian protestors on the Columbia lawn making national news despite being few in number, and generally loud and annoying but small and not particularly dangerous to anyone other than the peace and quiet we used to enjoy on campus.
So I wrote a few OpEds about what was happening including one for the Mises Institute entitled “Oops, Trump Just Bankrolled the Protesters He Intended to Silence” describing how by cancelling 400 million dollars in grants to Columbia over a few kids venting in the lawn, he emboldened them by giving them 400 million dollars worth of real-world power and influence.
Subsequently I wrote another OpEd about crackdowns on the free speech of international students by the Trump administration for antiwar.com, entitled “The Marketplace of Ideas Works Only If We Leave the Doors Open“, in which I discussed the Soviet scholars who had been invited to Columbia University to study in the 1950s, one of whom went on to become the architect of Glasnost and Perestroika, and argued that we should be inviting students from around the world to come here and experience free speech and open exchange of ideas, as it is the apex of American soft power.
This red, white and blue defense of free speech led to accusations of me being either anti-Semitic for not sympathizing enough with the angst the protests on campus cause Jewish students, or Islamophobic for describing the protestors as insufferable annoyances that a free society must be willing to tolerate. By alienating both sides, I was quite satisfied that I had written a balanced argument that accused the outrage on both sides of being largely performative. I described the backlash I received and made this very point about the need for America to tolerate all forms of speech, especially the speech we disagree with in a follow-up Op-Ed entitled “Free Speech for Me, Deportation for Thee.”
Laura Loomer
Then, one day in 2026, I get a google notification that my name appeared online, on X, and I found that someone named Laura Loomer had tweeted about me in a surprising and derogatory manner, claiming that I was the “Manhattan Liberal Elite” who “gave Thomas Massie his marching orders” to “release the Epstein Files to get Trump.” Of course, I had never heard of this woman, but was amused that she accusatorily blamed me for the one thing Congress has done in my lifetime that was popular with the overwhelming majority of Americans. Hell, I’ll take credit for that if she is handing it out, even if its completely absurd…
Laura Loomer appears to be a MAGA influencer who Trump Now, I voted for Trump and had high hopes for him on foreign policy – hopes that were largely dashed as he proceeded to start wars all around the world in his second term for no logical reason. But that is beside the point. The scary part is that because she is a sycophant, Trump listens to her and seems to think quite highly of her – the dangers of valuing loyalty over competence…
So anyway, on March 16, 2026, one of her minions, Charles R. Downs, posted on X that
“Last August, Thomas Massie traveled to liberal Midtown Manhattan for a fundraiser and “confidential briefing.”
Shortly after that event, Massie started ranting about the Trump administration being “pedophile protectors.”
It’s pretty obvious Massie went to New York City to get his “Get Trump” marching orders from the liberal elites. Kentucky voters deserve far better representation.
So that is pretty weird, but then Laura Loomer started doing research and stumbled on to the FEC database, and proudly posted that she had identified the “Manhattan liberal elite” in question – yes, she seems to have searched for anyone who donated to Thomas Massie from Manhattan in the weeks prior to his fundraiser. She proudly posted the following screenshot from the FEC database as a “gotcha”.
She tweeted, with great pride at her investigative prowess, that
“Columbia University Professor Who Defended Mahmoud Khalil Donated to Thomas Massie
Well, “Mullah Massie” seems to be really earning his nickname. FEC records confirm that Columbia University Professor Joseph D. Terwilliger donated to Thomas Massie in late July 2025, one week before Massie hosted a New York City fundraiser for himself.
Professor Terwilliger has criticized President Trump’s immigration policies in relation to Trump’s crackdown on pro-Hamas sympathizer Mahmoud Khalil, writing in a 2025 article:
“The Fourth Amendment seems to have an asterisk too, as students like Mahmoud Khalil have been arrested without warrants, held in what amounts to an American gulag, and now face deportation.”
A few days later, Terwilliger doubled down on his criticisms of President Trump and support for Hamas sympathizers on campus, titling an article “Free Speech for Me, Deportation for Thee,” where he wrote:
“I defended the right of international students like Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish graduate student at Tufts University and a Columbia alumna… She defended pro-divestment views on Israel… Yet she was thrown in an ICE detention center in Louisiana, labeled a ‘national security threat,’ all because Marco Rubio didn’t like her article.”
Now we know why Massie never discusses the source of his political donations.
Included with the tweet were images of screenshots of very selected excerpts from the two OpEds I described above, as follows:
and
The hilarious part is that in neither of these OpEds did I express agreement with either of the students I was defending. What I was defending was their right to not be deported for writing an OpEd or expressing a political opinion that was contrary to the current administration’s foreign policy. As quoted in the first of those two OpEds, Soviet scholar Alexander Yakovlev, architect of Glasnost, recalled, astonished, that professors had given him books that criticized American policies and insisted that even foreign students be free to argue and disagree. In Soviet universities, such behavior would have been unthinkable. Free speech was the soft power we were selling and even those loyal Soviet communists got the point and they could not unsee it. Today we send a different message, that free speech is no longer absolute for everyone, a position, interestingly that Laura Loomer once objected to when her friends Alex Jones, Nick Fuentes and Kanye West were criticized for expressing their rather non-mainstream views… In this clip she refers to herself as a free speech absolutist…
Anyway, at the time I thought it was hilarious that my donation to Massie prompted her to say “ Now we know why Massie never discusses the source of his political donations. ” My response was quite simple, knowing how much she loves President Trump, showing the full screenshot of my FEC database record, saying “Trump must be even more ashamed of his donors, by this logic…” adding the following screenshot…
At the time, I was rather amused at the incredible stupidity of this woman and her followers, who seem to be unconcerned with truth, but its hilarious that clearly in her feeble little brain the logic stream was impeccable.
Let’s see who attended Massie’s fundraiser in Manhattan (since obviously a Kentucky Congressmen would only have one of those if he was getting marching orders from the Manhattan liberal elites). Let’s search the FEC databse Massie donations list – aha – I found a Columbia University professor who donated before the fundraiser! He must be the Manhattan liberal elite. Oh and he gave Massie $500, so clearly he bought and paid for the Congressman (well, if it was that cheap, I’d buy them all and get the income tax repealed, end all sanctions, and get us out of these reckless foreign wars). And then, the genius deduced that because I attended his fundraiser, and it was only after that fundraiser that his push to release the Epstein Files became public, obviously I was sent there to give him marching orders, at that August event, over cold cuts and plastic cups of wine, to release the Epstein Files, with the sole reason being to get Trump. And of course I am pro-Hamas because I work at Columbia and defended free speech for students I happened to disagree with…
The irony is that unlike most Americans, I actually couldn’t care less about the contents of the Epstein Files. Wait, you mean megalomaniacs in Congress are a bunch of perverts who lust after pubescent teenagers. No way! I refuse to believe that. Come on, I assume they are all like that, so to me the Epstein Files is a big ho, hum… I don’t need salacious details to convince me that Congress is a cesspool… But anyway, since I am being blamed for it, I might as well change my tune and accept full blame for that…
I saw Massie at his 2026 Manhattan fundraiser, just before he lost his primary after Trump threw all his weight behind the task of defeating my good friend Congressman Massie, and I mentioned to him that he should be careful as I was the Manhattan Liberal Elite sent to give him his marching orders, and he just laughed and rolled his eyes at the absurdity of it all. hahahahaha
Yes, you heard it here first, I officially admit she was right – I am responsible foe the release of the Epstein Files. I did it – and I am the Manhattan Liberal Elite. Is it not obvious? So if you want me to buy another Congressman, send your $500 to my Paypal account, and I will get right on it!
