Converted on the road to Kyiv, Laura Loomer is shifting a bit of Trumpian America towards Ukraine

Laura Loomer, a far-right influencer with two million followers, travelled to Ukraine to see for herself a war she admits she did not understand: ‘I ended up in Russian propaganda,’ says Loomer, ‘I said that the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is a Nazi and ‘a fake Jew’; I supported Vladimir Putin and took part in his disinformation campaign by writing for RT, the Kremlin-backed broadcaster. Her change of heart – which culminated yesterday in an interview with Zelensky himself, who did not miss the opportunity to speak to someone who has direct contact with Donald Trump and who could persuade many others to follow suit – began for reasons not directly related to Ukraine: the other MAGA influencers – those from ‘Podcastistan’, as she calls them – who interviewed Putin or travelled to Moscow, glorifying the city, had become very hostile towards Israel, and so Loomer began to connect the dots, including the two that had long been plain for all to see: Russia, Iran, and their military and anti-American collaboration. 

Now, however, Loomer is in Kyiv and is dismantling Russian propaganda piece by piece, each time prefacing his remarks with: ‘I believed it too’. He met Moshe Azman, the Chief Rabbi, and discovered that Ukraine has laws against anti-Semitism that are ‘stronger than those in the United States’ – so much for Nazis; he met Sergiy Kyslytsya, who works in Zelensky’s presidential office, and noticed a copy of Jared Kushner’s book "Breaking History" on his desk; he took the opportunity to tell Trump’s son-in-law and envoy, as well as the other envoy, Steve Witkoff, to go to Kyiv rather than Moscow to try to put an end to the Russian aggression; she visited the McDonald’s in Kyiv that had been hit several times by Putin’s missiles but was still open; she compared it to the ‘fake’ McDonald’s visited by Tucker Carlson, a pro-Russian and anti-Israel influencer, and said: ‘Sanctions work; secondary sanctions will work even better’, calling for the passage of the bill introducing them, which has been stalled for months in the US Senate despite having bipartisan support; and she met and interviewed Zelensky; they discussed the relationship with Donald Trump that had collapsed and then been mended; she told him she hoped that next time she would be able to wear a Trump-style cap, because that would mean America was once again committed to defending Ukraine – Trump shared Loomer’s clips, commenting: “Very good”.

In an interview with Julia Ioffe for Puck, Loomer said that she felt things were starting to shift in Kyiv’s favour within the Trump administration, and then published the messages she had received, which read: ‘Thank you, I now realise that I, too, have fallen for Russian propaganda.’