The spectacle of Laura Loomer touching down in a Kyiv bomb shelter to announce her sudden conversion to supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia has been covered by much of the media as a sort of a political awakening. In a series of recent interviews with America’s most prominent news outlets, the MAGA influencer and conspiracy theorist took a victory lap for discovering — nearly four-and-a-half years after Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine — that Vladimir Putin is a liar. But what looks to be a surprising shift away from Russia is not a moral reckoning. It is a petty turf war amongst MAGA media — and Ukraine stands to benefit.
Our unfortunate reality is that the shallow personal ambitions and petty feuds of MAGA influencers can dictate foreign policy. Loomer holds no elected office and possesses no genuine policy expertise, yet because she knows how to flatter the vulnerabilities of Donald Trump, she wields terrifying influence on the administration and its agenda. After years of parroting Kremlin talking points and even calling on Putin to swallow Ukraine whole, Loomer recently took a tour of Ukraine, arranged and paid for by unnamed handlers, and had an epiphany. She has suddenly rebranded herself as Kyiv’s most unlikely defender, telling the New York Times that Ukrainian officials now “view me as an extension of the Trump administration.” She recorded a glowing, highly produced interview with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the gardens of the presidential palace, dined with the chief rabbi of Ukraine and declared that she had been “bamboozled” by Russian propaganda.
