The petty loyalty beef behind the MAGA Ukraine revolt

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. 

“You don’t need to listen to a podcaster and let them influence your opinion about a country. You can look at those facts yourself,” she told the Associated Press, blaming American social media platforms for banning her in the aftermath of Trump’s 2020 election loss, which led her to try Telegram, where Russian media is widely shared. “The Russians are very good at capitalizing on people’s rage. And I was very angry.” 

She elaborated six days later in an interview with NewsNation’s Batya Ungar-Sargon: “I really have come to understand that everything that I was led to believe while living in this echo chamber, a very toxic echo chamber, that is supported by foreign governments.

The whiplash is breathtaking, but it requires profound gullibility to take her transformation at face value. There is no ideological conversion here. Loomer’s evolution comes at precisely the moment when the Republican coalition is undergoing a bitter fight over what “America First” is supposed to mean. The old MAGA formula — distrust Ukraine, NATO and GOP hawks, and view Putin as a potentially useful counterweight to American liberalism — is colliding with a newer reality related to Trump’s ongoing and unpopular war of choice against Iran. Russia is increasingly difficult to portray as a friendly or even neutral power while it cooperates with the Islamic Republic. Ukraine’s resilience and effective drone campaigns, meanwhile, have made it impossible for even the most hardened cynics to paint Moscow as the inevitable victor. 

Loomer’s reversal is also inseparable from her rivalry with fellow podcasters Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Megyn Kelly and other right-wing media figures who have become increasingly hostile to Trump over Israel, Iran and the use of American military power. Loomer herself has said the right-wing split over Iran prompted her to reconsider Ukraine, and she claimed to have noticed that people she regarded as opponents of Trump were simultaneously advancing Russia-friendly arguments. Now she worries those pro-Russian voices inside the MAGA coalition have become “the biggest detriment to social cohesion” heading into what, by all credible predictions, will be a brutal midterm cycle for Republicans.

Start your day with essential news from Salon.Sign up for our free morning newsletter, Crash Course.

Owens’ decision to travel to Putin’s marquee conference in St. Petersburg and Carlson’s ongoing pushing of lines amplified directly by Russian state media have provided Loomer with a tactical opening. She realized that her online nemeses had cornered the market on reflexive Kremlin apologetics. By pivoting to a pro-Ukraine posture wrapped in the language of America First security investments, she’s weaponizing patriotism against her rivals while positioning herself as the true guardian of the movement’s ideological purity. This evolving narrative frames support for Ukraine not as an act of charity or foreign aid, but as a hard-headed business transaction, one Trump appears to have welcomed. He publicly endorsed her meeting with Zelenskyy, and Loomer has said she spoke twice with Trump while in Ukraine.

None of this happens in a vacuum. In September 2024, the Justice Department indicted two Russian state media employees for funneling nearly $10 million into Tenet Media, a Tennessee outfit whose talent roster included right-wing podcasters Tim Pool, Benny Johnson and Dave Rubin, all of whom produced content the indictment says was crafted to inflame American divisions and tilt coverage toward candidates the Kremlin found useful. Pool was allegedly pulling in a $100,000 an episode while insisting he had no idea where the cash originated, a claim that got considerably shakier once reporters noted he’d made major real estate purchases the same month Tenet launched. After Loomer arrived in Kyiv last month, Pool experienced his own conversion and posted that Ukraine had been “fighting for their very existence against an evil dictator” and hoped Trump would “lend their support.”

Republican voters have also been moving in this direction. In January 2026, Pew Research Center found that 47% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents described Russia as an enemy of the U.S, up from 40% the year before. Republican confidence in Zelenskyy also rose four points to 34%.

While Loomer works to convert MAGA to the Ukrainian cause, the press should stop treating her reversal as a heroic story about one brave influencer seeing the light. They should instead frame it for what it actually is: a split in MAGA media over Ukraine and Russia that is ultimately a domestic turf war disguised as statecraft.