Supporting Kyiv is ‘America First’. Laura Loomer’s U-turn

Laura Loomer, the controversial but influential pro-Trump blogger, arrived in Kyiv on 19 July with only a few meetings scheduled and, according to her own account, no objective other than to see the war-torn country with her own eyes. Ten days later, she returned to Florida as one of the most prominent pro-Ukraine MAGA supporters. Meanwhile, a figure who until recently had been a fierce critic of Kyiv has made international headlines by interviewing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and a frontline commander, and by trying to persuade Special Envoy Steve Witkoff to visit Kyiv for the first time. She has challenged her fellow members of the MAGA movement to re-examine the conflict and America’s role in the world. “I feel as though I’ve changed global politics,” Loomer said in a telephone interview.

Loomer said she was planning a visit to the White House this month to discuss, amongst other things, her trip with US President Donald Trump, who promoted her interview with Zelensky online. Trump has remained a staunch supporter of Loomer, much to the dismay of some advisers, praising her tenacity and her devotion to him. Trump, too, has recently shown himself to be somewhat more supportive of Ukraine, stating at a NATO summit in July that he had no objection to Kyiv launching attacks inside Russia and opening the door to the possibility of Ukraine being granted a licence for US missile defence technology. In recent months, he has been more cordial towards Zelensky – whom he had once barred from the White House – as Kyiv has held its ground against Russian advances on the battlefield and threatened the Kremlin by pushing deep into its territory. Following Tuesday’s meeting with Zelensky, Trump said he wanted the war to end, without, however, taking sides between him and Russian President Vladimir Putin. “It’s very simple: I get on well with both of them,” he said. “I get on well with President Putin, I get on well with President Zelensky.”

Loomer said she hoped to convince Americans that Russia is the problem. After years of attacking Zelensky and opposing US support for Ukraine, Loomer returned from the country having become a fervent advocate of a strategic alliance, linking Ukrainian resistance to Russia with Trump’s war in Iran. “Russia is anti-American and its values are not ours; furthermore, it wants multipolarity, which means the end of American supremacy, and that is not good for America,” she said in an interview, echoing arguments long put forward by hawkish politicians from both parties who have advocated the need for strong international alliances and resistance to the Kremlin. If he were president, he said, the United States “would find a way to ensure that the Russian president suffers a sudden and fatal heart attack”.

Until last September, he had been publicly criticising Zelensky. “Ukraine is a country full of Nazi apologists and is now clearly a country led by a jihadist apologist,” he wrote on X after Zelensky had met the Syrian president, Ahmed al Sharaa, at the United Nations.

Loomer’s sensational public conversion came just a few days after Kyiv had lost its most important supporter within Trump’s inner circle, Senator Lindsey Graham (Republican from South Carolina), who died of an aortic dissection on 11 July, the day after meeting Zelensky in Ukraine. His surprising change of course marked a victory for Ukrainian efforts to win over American conservatives, countering the years of lobbying by the Kremlin that had sidelined many of the party’s European hawks from the Reagan era. A year ago, Zelensky and Olha Stefanishyna, now his outgoing ambassador to Washington, devised a strategy to reach out to influencers within the MAGA movement, even those who were sceptical of Ukraine, he said. “The outcome of her visit is hugely significant,” Stefanishyna told reporters on Thursday, adding that she had come up with the idea of taking Loomer to visit a bombed-out McDonald’s in Kyiv. “We expect it to encourage everyone, from President Trump to anyone else who wishes to do so, to come to Ukraine to make this journey and see with their own eyes everything she has seen.” The ambassador said she had discussed Loomer’s visit with Zelenskyy when he arrived in Washington on Monday. “My president really enjoyed this interview,” Stefanishyna said. “He had a lovely smile on his face” when they spoke about it. But she declined to answer a question about the embassy’s role in Loomer’s trip.

Loomer stated that some American donors, whose identities she did not wish to reveal, had helped cover security costs, but that she had not received any funds from abroad. Loomer funds her work through crowdfunding, generates revenue from her online programmes, and also sells opposition research and background checks. According to Loomer, her views on Ukraine began to change gradually over the past year and a half, when she noticed that other right-wing podcasters were spreading conspiracy theories and criticising Trump’s support for Israel and his attacks on Iran, only to be picked up by the Russian state media propaganda outlet, RT, and other pro-Russian social media accounts. She has had increasing online clashes with pacifist influencers. “Russia is conducting a foreign influence operation on social media to sow chaos and division in American politics and to radicalise people, particularly those on the right,” Loomer said. “There are many conservatives who have been completely radicalised and brainwashed by Russian propaganda.”

In June, Candace Owens and other right-wing online personalities travelled to Russia for an annual conference that Putin has long promoted as the Russian version of Davos, the meeting place of the global economic elite. That same month, a producer who works with Loomer, Andrew Moore, attended a security conference in Odessa, Ukraine, and told her that people there liked the way she criticised Russia. Loomer said this made her want to go there in person. She organised the trip in secret, concerned by an Iranian propaganda video focusing on her and by the fact that her photo appeared among the ‘target’-style posters displayed at the funeral of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in July.

Her arrival last month caused such a stir that Zelensky agreed to grant her an interview lasting more than 40 minutes. During the conversation, she urged the Ukrainian leader to improve his communication with the Americans, particularly on issues relating to neo-Nazism promoted by Russia. “I simply think that you should perhaps make more of an effort to emphasise to the international community that it is illegal here to possess Nazi-style items, that you end up in prison if you possess Nazi-style items, and that it is illegal to be anti-Semitic,” said Loomer, who is Jewish. She reiterated this point during meetings with her staff, posing for a photo with the deputy head of Zelensky’s administration in front of a whiteboard on which she had written: “I hope you will improve your responsiveness and your ability to communicate with the Americans and with President Trump regarding how grateful you are to the Americans… With love, Laura Loomer”. She also left Kyiv, the fortified capital where one usually receives advance warning of Russian air strikes, to travel to Kharkiv, a city near the Russian border that is far more dangerous. Once there, she interviewed Andriy Biletsky, the founder of Azov, a group of volunteer fighters that was later absorbed into the official Ukrainian armed forces, whose historical links with white supremacists have long fuelled the Russian narrative that their Ukrainian opponents were neo-Nazis.

Biletsky, a former ultra-nationalist politician who now holds the rank of brigadier general in the Ukrainian army, denied to Loomer that he was a neo-Nazi. He stated that he was aware he was putting both his physical safety and his reputation at risk. Loomer found herself in RT’s crosshairs and her clash with the pacifist podcasters intensified. She returned to the United States claiming that the isolationists within the MAGA movement were misinterpreting Trump’s message and harming US interests. “We have nothing to gain from Russia; we have a great deal to gain from Ukraine,” she said, reiterating Zelensky’s arguments that Ukraine can help the United States by sharing its technology and expertise in countering the Iranian-made drones used by Russia. “Supporting Ukraine against Russia in this war is ‘America First’.”

Isaac Arnsdorf and Michael Birnbaum

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