By Kanishka Singh and Gabriella Borter

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House on Thursday reprimanded former President Donald Trump over his ties to far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, who traveled with the Republican presidential candidate this week.

Loomer says she doesn’t work for Trump. She has said she talks to him about political matters, though, and she regularly visits his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida. Her incendiary posts on X, where she has 1.2 million followers, sometimes seem like fodder for Trump’s next line of attack.

Ahead of Trump’s debate with Democratic Vice President and presidential candidate Kamala Harris on Tuesday, Loomer said that if Harris, who is of Indian descent, wins the Nov. 5 election, “the White House will smell like curry and speeches in the White House will be routed through a call center.”

“It’s abhorrent, these kinds of comments, it’s un-American to say these kinds of things, exactly the kind of hateful and divisive rhetoric that we must condemn,” White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said Thursday.

“No leader should ever work with someone who spreads this kind of ugliness and this kind of racist poison,” said Jean-Pierre.

Loomer flew with Trump to his debate in Pennsylvania on Tuesday and was in New York with him and his team on Wednesday for a commemoration of the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaeda attacks, video and photo evidence show.

Loomer has previously suggested that the 9/11 attacks were an insider job, sharing a video on Twitter last year promoting that conspiracy theory. She has since reversed her position, telling CNN in an interview published Thursday that the attacks were carried out by “Islamic terrorists.”

When asked about the White House’s criticism of his ties to Loomer, Trump’s campaign did not directly address their relationship. He did say he sought party unity during Wednesday’s ceremony commemorating the 9/11 attacks.

In an online post, Loomer dismissed the White House criticism, denying she was a racist and suggesting that Jean-Pierre, the daughter of Haitian immigrants, was critical because she didn’t like Loomer’s social media post Thursday about a false claim that Haitian immigrants eat pets.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh, Gabriella Borter, Alexandra Ulmer and Helen Coster; Editing by Ross Colvin and Howard Goller)