MAGA firebrand Laura Loomer, who’s warring with anti-Israel figures on the fitting, is invoking her Judaism as she pulls an about-face on a former hobbyhorse of hers: Ukraine.
Loomer interviewed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on a go to to the nation this week, asking him about his Jewish id and the nation’s antisemitism insurance policies. She additionally sat down with influential rabbi Moshe Azman as Ukraine’s punishing struggle with Russia drags into its fourth yr.
In a sequence of tweets, she apologized for her previous assertions that Ukraine is “stuffed with Nazi sympathizers,” and that Zelensky was “a self-hating Nazi Jew.”
“I admit it, I fell for Russian propaganda,” Loomer, who wields appreciable affect with President Donald Trump, wrote Friday after sharing “a stunning Kosher dinner” with Azman’s household. She additionally visited a historic Kyiv monastery just lately shelled by Russian drones and invited Zelensky to make his case for why supporting Ukraine was “America First.”
Loomer’s Jewish Ukraine tour comes because the American proper is splintering, largely between pro- and anti-Israel factions — pitting the likes of Loomer and Jewish pundit Ben Shapiro in opposition to these aligned with pundit Tucker Carlson.
Army support to Ukraine has served as a stress level between the hawks and isolationists since Russia’s invasion in 2022. The 2 points have turn out to be more and more intertwined, with the fitting’s loudest anti-Israel voices opposing the U.S.-Israel struggle in opposition to Iran and likewise projecting weariness round supporting Ukraine.
Vice President JD Vance, whose language on Israel and Jewish points has alarmed some Jewish leaders, took credit score for halting U.S. support to Ukraine earlier this yr. Vance’s affiliate Carlson, who has just lately turned on Trump and damaged with the Republican Social gathering, carried out a softball interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2024. The U.S. Senate will vote on a brand new joint Russia-Iran sanctions invoice subsequent week.
U.S. President Donald Trump (R) meets with Volodymyr Zelensky, President of Ukraine (L) for bilateral talks at Beştepe Presidential Compound in the course of the NATO Summit on July 08, 2026 in Ankara, Turkey. (Win McNamee/Getty Pictures)
Trump himself exhibited closeness with Putin throughout his first time period and, along with Vance, chastised Zelensky throughout a White Home assembly final yr. However his administration has indicated a latest willingness to attempt to finish the struggle on phrases sympathetic to Ukraine, and the 2 leaders are scheduled to fulfill within the White Home subsequent week.
Loomer, too, previously exhibited pro-Russia tendencies, together with writing for the Russian-owned English-language outlet RT. Extra just lately, she has feuded with different right-wing media figures, together with Carlson, Candace Owens and Joe Rogan, usually citing her pro-Israel views as the rationale for the falling-out. Not like a rising variety of pundits on the fitting, she has additionally continued to cheer on the struggle with Iran at the same time as its assist has sunk throughout social gathering traces and different commentators have sought to solid blame onto Israel.
Loomer has additionally used inflammatory rhetoric towards Muslims, calling on Trump to go “a Muslim Ban because it was meant to be” after New York Metropolis Mayor Zohran Mamdani referred to as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “struggle felony” earlier this week.
In her Zelensky interview, filmed on the Ukrainian presidential palace and launched in full on Friday, Loomer tried to play partisan politics. She unsuccessfully urged him to name Trump the perfect president in historical past and advised him that his 2024 go to to a Pennsylvania munitions manufacturing unit alongside Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro was “one of many the explanation why lots of People got here to dislike you.” (Shapiro, who can be Jewish, was on the time a outstanding marketing campaign surrogate for then-Vice President Kamala Harris, who was operating for president.)
Loomer sought a Jewish reference to the president, telling him, “I’m Jewish, you’re Jewish. We share that in widespread.” Zelensky, who not often publicly feedback on his Jewish heritage, highlighted that Ukraine earlier this yr handed a legislation criminalizing antisemitism.
“It’s unlawful, antisemitism. We did it throughout my presidency,” he stated. The brand new legislation, a strengthening of a 2021 legislation, institutes fines and doable jail phrases for these discovered responsible of hatred or discrimination on the idea of Jewish id.
Zelensky, who has lengthy loved largely unqualified assist amongst Democrats and liberal People, praised Loomer’s go to and alter of coronary heart. He, Azman and different Ukrainian figures who met with Loomer have sought to domesticate elevated favor with Trump throughout a very unsure part of the struggle.
Laura Loomer arrives at Philadelphia Worldwide Airport on The Trump Group’s airplane forward of the presidential debate, Sept. 10, 2024. (Julia Beverly/Getty Pictures)
Loomer advised the president her essential objective was to counter “Russian propaganda” she believed was outstanding amongst American podcasters, together with allegations of hyperlinks between Ukraine’s army and Naziism.
“I actually opposed sending my taxpayer {dollars} to Ukraine as a result of I actually believed that you simply had a military, the Azov Battalion, stuffed with Nazis,” she advised Zelensky, referencing an notorious Ukrainian army wing that has continued to draw scrutiny, each earlier than and after the 2022 invasion, for its hyperlinks to neo-Nazis and different extremists.
“We aren’t Nazis,” Zelensky advised her, later urging her to go to Babyn Yar, the memorial to the “Holocaust by bullets” perpetrated by Nazis on Ukrainian soil with the assistance of native collaborators in 1941. In 2022, shortly after the invasion, a Russian bombing close to the memorial prompted Zelensky to make an attraction to the worldwide Jewish neighborhood for assist.
Loomer, who’s infamous for credulously reporting explosive allegations in opposition to her political enemies, stated she accepted Ukraine’s claims to now be Nazi-free. One of many deciding elements, she stated, was assembly with Azman, the Chabad-affiliated rabbi who holds the disputed title of chief rabbi of Ukraine and whose son was killed in battle with Russia in 2024.
“The Rabbi advised me his lifeless Jewish son didn’t combat alongside Nazis,” Loomer tweeted, including, “I can guarantee Amercians [sic] that Jews are safer in Ukraine than they’re in Mamdani’s New York Metropolis!” (Azman has additionally praised the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riots by Trump supporters, celebrating them for “protesting mass election fraud” and evaluating them to the Maidan, the 2014 Ukrainian protest motion that ousted a pro-Russia president.)
Most diaspora Jews and Jewish organizations have backed Ukraine for the reason that invasion and have decried Putin’s preliminary assertion that his invasion was meant to “denazify” the nation. Loomer has now joined their ranks, hoping to marry that assist to her personal ideological id as a Jewish right-winger in an period the place the president she has lengthy championed is shedding some affect.
“We received’t have Trump perpetually,” she wrote Tuesday, “and the axis of evil is transferring quick.”
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