What’s behind Maga influencer Laura Loomer’s about-face on Ukraine? | Donald Trump
Online Maga provocateur Laura Loomer has never worked in the White House or anywhere in the government, but her sudden return to the Ukraine case this week is significant because her social media posts often have real policy implications for the second Trump administration.
The right-wing commentator spent the last few days in Kiev; here he declared his newfound sympathy for Ukraine in its long war with Russia and admitted that he had previously been caught up in Russian propaganda.
Loomer, who has previously echoed speeches to the Kremlin’s 2 million followers on social media, has had direct access to Trump since the 2024 presidential campaign. In the first months after Trump’s return to office, Loomer used his online presence to push for an ideological purge of government personnel, including many in the national security field.
For a while, his power to disrupt careers among foreign policy officials made him seem like Trump’s de facto national security adviser.
It’s unclear whether that kind of influence still exists in the White House, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy certainly took him seriously when he arrived this week and held a private meeting with him on Thursday.
Three days ago, Loomer shared a post explaining that he experienced his first air attack when Russian missiles hit the Ukrainian capital.
“This is an event every day for every Ukrainian,” she said, adding that she felt he was “a jerk who has been minimizing the struggle of Ukrainians for the last 5 years.”
“I often said I didn’t care. Looking back, it wasn’t very nice of me to say that. There are people in Ukraine who have to run to bomb shelters every day, and some of us had the audacity to say that Russia wasn’t wrong because we believed the lie that Ukraine was a country full of Nazi sympathizers. We were so propagandized by Russia that we didn’t even realize it.”
Before Thursday’s meeting, Zelenskyy’s office released the following statement: “It’s really important that @LauraLoomer is in Ukraine and sees everything with her own eyes.”
Loomer’s change of heart is potentially significant not only because he is close to Trump, but also because he has long served as a reliable barometer of Maga’s attitudes.
Loomer has long been disdainful of Ukraine and espouses a viewpoint that can only be described as pro-Russian. Many in Maga circles have had positive views of Russian President Vladimir Putin for years, thanks to his propaganda depicting Russia as a bulwark against homosexuality and a defender of fundamentalist Christianity. They are convinced that the Russia-Ukraine war is a proxy struggle between Russia’s fundamentalist Christianity and the EU’s western secularism.
Loomer’s replacement comes at a critical moment for Ukraine, which recently lost one of its strongest supporters in Washington with the death this month of Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina who had repeatedly pushed for increased sanctions on Russia to punish Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine.
But Loomer’s shift also coincides with a recent significant shift in Trump’s views on Ukraine.
Trump returned to office openly hating Ukraine, at least partly because of the 2019 impeachment for his attempt to withhold aid to Ukraine in exchange for smearing Joe Biden. Early in his second term, Trump humiliated Zelenskyy in an Oval Office meeting, cut off direct supplies of US weapons, and forced Ukraine’s European allies to buy American weapons for Kiev instead.
But Trump loves winners, and Ukraine managed to slow Russia’s advance even without Washington’s full support. Kiev has become a global leader in drone technology and has taken the fight to Russia with long-range missile strikes on the country’s oil infrastructure, leading to an energy crisis in one of the world’s largest oil-producing countries.
Clearly impressed by Ukraine’s performance, Trump announced at a NATO summit in Türkiye earlier this month that the United States would license Patriot missile technology to Ukraine, allowing Kiev to produce advanced air defense missiles on its own.
At the same time, Trump also supported Congress’ move, supported by Graham, to impose new sanctions on Russia; He also appears to have reversed an earlier insistence that Ukraine must agree to give up large swathes of territory in exchange for any U.S.-brokered peace deal.
Trump’s policy changes were modest but significant; It’s possible Loomer may change her position just to stay in line with Trump.
But his return may be even more politically significant if it represents a broader thawing of Maga’s attitudes toward Ukraine and an awakening to the dangers of Russian propaganda.
