Rajdeep Sardesai was sitting in the audience. She had no idea.
An Indian journalist noticed her words. He read them back to her, on camera, in front of a live audience, at one of India’s most prominent media conclaves. And the internet has been cheering ever since.
The incident between Laura Loomer, a far-right political activist and US President Donald Trump loyalist and Indian journalist Rajdeep Sardesai has been the hot topic of the weekend.
The internet cannot stop applauding Sardesai for calling out Loomer over her social media posts and public statements in a fiery display.
Sardesai eventually ended up trending for all the right reasons.
It seems that everyone had been waiting for someone to stand up to her vitriol and call out her hypocrisy, especially when she was being given such an honourable welcome into the very country she had previously criticised.
What Happened With Rajdeep Sardesai And Laura Loomer?
On March 14, 2026, Laura Loomer, a far-right political activist and loyalist of US President Donald Trump, appeared at the recently concluded India Today Conclave 2026. She spoke at the “Death to Islamic Terrorism: The Trump Approach” segment. Loomer, who has no official White House or US government title, is also a known conspiracy theorist.
During the speaker session, she made comments like “Pakistan’s biggest export to the world is Islamic terrorism, and I don’t believe the US should be cosying up to the Pakistani government at all,” and how “Pakistan operates as an openly jihadist and pro-Sharia state, and when you look at many of the Islamist terror attacks around the world, there is often some connection back to Pakistan.”
Loomer also made comments like “I believe that Islam is a cancer on the world,” and “I don’t believe that Islamophobia is real. I believe Islamophobia is a hoax.”
She expressed her anger at Muslims holding public office in the United States. This seemed to be a pointed remark against leaders Minnesota representative Ilhan Omar, New York City Mayor Zohran Mandani, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, and Michigan Representative Rashida Tlaib.
She said, “When you have Muslims serving an office in the US — whether it’s Ilhan Omar or Rashida Tlaib or Keith Ellison or Zohran Mamdani, who is now the first Muslim mayor of New York City — they put Islam front and centre in everything. They changed the rules. We had a long-standing rule in the US Congress of no head coverings, and now you have hijab in the Congress.”
She further added that “They openly support Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood. Ilhan Omar has advocated for members of ISIS in her district in Minnesota, which is the number one ISIS recruitment location in the US. Mamdani is campaigning with the co-conspirators of the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing”.
Loomer, who describes herself as a “proud Islamophobe,” concluded that “it should be illegal for Muslims to hold public office in the United States.”
It was during this segment that India Today’s senior journalist Rajdeep Sardesai, who had been sitting in the audience, rose to speak.
What followed is now among the most-watched clips in Indian media this week, with Sardesai’s post on X already clocking over 1.3 million views.
At around the 6.28 timestamp in the video above, the veteran journalist brought up her 2024 tweet about the White House smelling like curry if then-Vice President Kamala Harris became the US president. Sardesai cited her post about how the US was built by “white Europeans, not third‑world invaders from India”. And then he said, directly to her face:
“I think you should do more than just express regret. From what I can see, you’re brazenly racist and Islamophobic. And I’m sorry to say that… we have Atithi Devo Bhava (guest is God) in this country, where we welcome all, but your comments smack of anti-Indianism; worse still, Islamophobia; and even worse, racism, which has no place, ma’am, in today’s world. So, get real, ma’am. Sorry to say that, but those comments are unacceptable to me as an Indian and as a world citizen.”
Read More: This Is Why Trump Is Attacking India With Tariffs, As Per Raghuram Rajan
The audience applauded.
The critical and discriminatory tweets have since been deleted, incidentally just before her appearance in the country.
Just before Rajdeep’s comment, when the moderator asked if she regretted her anti-India tweets, Loomer clarified that it wasn’t her who deleted them all, but that some were deleted by Twitter.
She said, “Twitter deleted some of them. I had no choice but to delete some of them because Twitter actually locked my account…”
She did refuse to apologise for her H-1B stance, saying, “I am not going to apologise for opposing the H-1B visa programme, because my job is to stand up for American interests. Our immigration and labour laws have been exploited and abused. I will continue to fight for American workers who are struggling to find employment”.
Loomer added, though, “I should not have said some of the things I wrote in the other tweets. Not about H-1B. And I apologise if my remarks offended people.”
Loomer also added, “I do not come from a place of hatred; my comments come from a place of love for my people and my country.”
“I do not have hatred in my heart for India or for Hindu people. I am an advocate for Hindus and speak out against the brutality of radical Islam that has persecuted millions of Hindus around the world.”
Apparently, her mind did not change all that much, since soon after the conclave, Loomer hit back on social media, accusing Sardesai of being an “Islam sympathiser,” and sharing an old clip of journalist Mehdi Hasan to argue double standards.
What She Said About India And Indians
Laura Loomer is a 32-year-old American far-right political activist and one of the most influential and controversial unofficial figures in Donald Trump’s White House orbit.
She got her start doing undercover stunt journalism for Project Veritas and InfoWars. She stormed the stage of a Shakespeare performance in New York in 2017, got arrested, and became a MAGA celebrity overnight.
She was subsequently banned from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and even food delivery apps for hate speech and targeted harassment.
Since Trump’s return to the White House, she has transformed from a banned internet personality into something far more alarming: a person with influence in the Trump administration. She has been linked to the removal of the FDA vaccine chief, the top NSA lawyer, and Trump’s own surgeon general nominee.
Despite her current posture as an advocate for Hindus and an ally against Islamist terrorism, Loomer has a long and documented record of targeting Indians specifically.
This Instagram post has also listed out some of the extremely hateful, anti-India tweets.
View this post on Instagram
She has a documented history of opposing the H-1B visa programme, using, as India Today put it, “crude stereotypes to question the intellectual abilities and hygiene of Indian people.” Before flying to New Delhi, she quietly deleted thousands of these tweets. She thought the slate was clean.
Rajdeep Sardesai’s comments went viral online, with many applauding him or agreeing with his comments and further condemning Loomer for her remarks.
Some, though, did bring up the question of why Loomer was invited to an Indian event of this scale, knowing her history of being anti-Indian and anti-Muslim.
There has also been rising speculation that this all was staged as a way to increase India Today’s TRP or Sardesai’s decreasing popularity.
View this post on Instagram
Rajdeep Sardesai deserves credit for saying, on camera and on record, what many felt. The applause in that room was real.
But the bigger question, the one that’s slightly less comfortable, is why Loomer was invited at all. The tweets existed before the invitation was sent. The record was public. India Today and the Ministry of External Affairs both had access to the same internet that everyone else did.
The viral confrontation was satisfying. The question of who opened the door for her in the first place has been somewhat conveniently buried beneath it.
Image Credits: Google Images
Sources: India Today, The Financial Express, The Indian Express
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