{"id":783837,"date":"2026-07-25T14:25:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T14:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/783837\/"},"modified":"2026-07-25T14:25:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T14:25:10","slug":"whats-behind-maga-influencer-laura-loomers-about-face-on-ukraine-donald-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/783837\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s behind Maga influencer Laura Loomer\u2019s about-face on Ukraine? | Donald Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">Laura Loomer, the online Maga provocateur, has never worked in the White House or anywhere else in the government, but <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2026\/jul\/24\/maga-influencer-laura-loomer-reverses-course-on-ukraine-after-kyiv-visit\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">her sudden conversion to the Ukrainian cause<\/a> this week is significant because her social media posts often have real policy implications in the second <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/trump-administration\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Trump administration<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">The rightwing commentator has spent the last few days in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/kyiv\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Kyiv<\/a>, where she announced a newfound sympathy for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/ukraine\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Ukraine<\/a> in its long war with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/russia\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Russia<\/a>, and admitted that she had previously fallen for Russian propaganda.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">Loomer \u2013 who has previously echoed Kremlin talking points to her 2 million followers on social media \u2013 has enjoyed direct access to Trump since the 2024 presidential campaign. During the early months after Trump returned to office, Loomer used her online presence to push for ideological purges of government personnel, including many in the national security arena.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">For a time, her power to break careers among foreign policy officials made her seem as if she were <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2025\/jul\/06\/laura-loomer-donald-trump-maga-influencer\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Trump\u2019s de facto national security adviser<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">It is unclear whether she still has that kind of pull inside the White House, but Ukraine\u2019s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, certainly took her seriously when she arrived this week, holding a private meeting with her on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">Three days earlier, Loomer posted about experiencing her first air raid, as Russian missiles pounded the Ukrainian capital<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">\u201cThis is everyday for every Ukrainian,\u201d she posting, adding she felt that she had been \u201can asshole for minimizing the struggle of Ukrainians for the last 5 years\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">\u201cI often said I don\u2019t care. Looking back, that wasn\u2019t very nice of me to say. There are people in Ukraine who have to run to a bomb shelter everyday and some of us had the audacity to say Russia wasn\u2019t wrong because we believed the lie that Ukraine is a country full of Nazi sympathizers. We have been so propagandized by Russia and we don\u2019t even realize it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">Before their meeting on Thursday, Zelenskyy\u2019s office posted a statement saying: \u201cIt is really important that @LauraLoomer is in Ukraine and sees things with her own eyes as they are.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">Loomer\u2019s change of heart is potentially important not only because she is close to Trump, but also because she has long served as a reliable barometer of Maga attitudes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">Loomer has long been disdainful of Ukraine, adopting what could only be described as a pro-Russian perspective. Many in Maga circles have for years held positive views of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, thanks to Russian propaganda that portrayed him as a bulwark against homosexuality and a defender of fundamentalist Christianity. They became convinced that the Russia-Ukraine war was a proxy fight between Russia\u2019s fundamentalist Christianity and the EU\u2019s western secularism.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">Loomer\u2019s shift 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 consistently pushed for increased sanctions on Russia to punish Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">But Loomer\u2019s change also coincides with what appears to be an important recent shift in Trump\u2019s own views on Ukraine.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">Trump returned to office openly hating Ukraine, at least in part because of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/trump-impeachment-2019\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">2019 impeachment<\/a> over his attempt to hold up aid to Ukraine in exchange for dirt on Joe Biden. Early in his second term, Trump <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2025\/feb\/28\/trump-zelenskyy-shouting-match-oval-office\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">humiliated Zelenskyy in an Oval Office meeting<\/a>, cut off direct the supply of US weapons and forced Ukraine\u2019s European allies to buy American weapons for Kyiv instead.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">But Trump likes winners, and even without full support from Washington, Ukraine has been able to slow Russia\u2019s advance. Kyiv has become a global leader in drone technology, and it has taken the war to Russia itself with long-range missile attacks on the country\u2019s oil infrastructure, leading to an energy crisis in one of the world\u2019s biggest oil-producing nations.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">Clearly impressed with Ukraine\u2019s performance, Trump announced at the Nato summit in Turkey earlier this month that the US would license Patriot missile technology to Ukraine, allowing Kyiv to produce the advanced air defense missiles on its own.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">At the same time, Trump also supported a move in Congress, which had been backed by Graham, to impose new sanctions on Russia, while also seeming to back off an earlier insistence that Ukraine would have to agree to give up large swaths of territory in exchange for any US-brokered peace deal with Russia.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">Trump\u2019s policy shifts were modest, but significant; it is possible that Loomer changed her position simply in order to stay in lockstep with Trump.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">But her about-face could be even more politically significant if it represents a broader thawing of Maga attitudes towards Ukraine and an awakening to the dangers of Russian propaganda.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Laura Loomer, the online Maga provocateur, has never worked in the White House or anywhere else in the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":783838,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-783837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=783837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/783838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=783837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=783837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=783837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}