MAGA’s Laura Loomer Visits Ukraine and Suddenly Wakes Up to Reality

Right-wing, Islamophobic conspiracy theorist and commentator Laura Loomer is on a P.R. tour of Ukraine in a complete departure from her historically pro-Russian, anti-Ukranian rhetoric.

Loomer touched down in Ukraine on Monday, posting herself eating McDonald’s near a destroyed building and heaping praise and defense on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Loomer acknowledged that she previously fell for Russian propaganda. In another post on X Monday, she wrote:

I did say these things about Ukraine and Zelensky and I am not deleting my posts because I’ve realized, I was wrong. I was living in a media echo chamber and I was propagandized by Russian media on social media to believe those things. So I came to Ukraine to see the country for myself. I am going to try to find evidence for the propaganda I’ve been fed, and if I don’t find it, I will let everyone know so they too can come to see the light. On day one, I’ve already seen photos of dead priests in Bucha murdered by Russia and I saw the mass grave where the bodies of murdered Christians were placed after Russia sent forces from Chechnya to massacre innocent people. I spoke with officials who rescue POWs and they showed me photos of Ukrainian POWs who had swastikas engraved into their forehead by Russians.

She noted that she had been lied to about who the real Nazis were. (There are real Nazis everywhere, including in Ukraine, for what it’s worth.)

“Just experienced my first air raid in Ukraine. Sirens blaring. This is everyday for every Ukrainian,” Loomer said in another post Tuesday. “I feel like such an asshole for minimizing the struggle of Ukrainians for the last 5 years. I often said I don’t care. Looking back, that wasn’t 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’t 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’t even realize it.”

Zelenskiy welcomed Loomer’s visit. “It is really important that [LauraLoomer] is in Ukraine and sees things with her own eyes as they are,” his office wrote on X. “There is no better way to get informed opinion than through personal experience which allows to deal with Russian propaganda.”

This is a radical departure for Loomer, who has spent years attacking Ukraine, and even wrote a few columns for the Kremlin-sponsored Russia Today.

“Zelensky shaking hands with an Islamic terrorist who has murderer US soldiers is another reason to have disdain for [Zelenskiy]. I don’t want any more of my tax dollars going to Ukraine. Ukraine is a country full of Nazi apologists and now it’s clearly a country led by a Jihadi apologist,” Loomer said in a post last year following Zelenskiy’s meeting with Syrian President Ahmed Al Sharaa, whom she referred to by his nom de guerre, Julani. “Julani is a cold blooded killer. He was wanted by the US for $10 million up until May. He’s a very bad guy who wants a global Islamic caliphate. This is going to backfire spectacularly on everyone who is shaking hands with Julani.”

In another post from 2023, Loomer accused former President Joe Biden of “funding Nazi death squads in Ukraine with US taxpayer dollars.”

“Look forward to your balanced coverage from ‘Kyiv,’” RT editor in chief Margarita Simonyan wrote Monday. “To Ms Loomer’s credit, we did enjoy her columns for RT back in the day.”

It’s unclear why Loomer has changed her tune so suddenly, but as an influencer who unfortunately has a direct line of communication to Trump, this may have wider ramifications.

The Trump administration announced that it’s pausing $1 billion in Medicare and Medicaid payments to California and Minnesota, accusing the states of widespread fraud. 

Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz made the announcement in a press conference Tuesday, accusing recipients of the programs in the two states of “suspected fraud and noncompliance.” 

“If those ​states want that money they need to provide ​documentation that these payments are legitimate,” Kennedy said. 

But as Reuters reported, neither Kennedy nor Oz offered new evidence of fraud. 

President Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and multiple administration officials have attacked Democratic-run states in the last few months, accusing them of engaging in widespread fraud when it comes to public services. In May, the White House blocked $1.3 billion in Medicaid reimbursements for California, claiming that the state was not tackling fraud in its home and hospice health agencies. 

Last month, Trump reportedly directed federal agencies to look into how they could block funding for the state of California, and the Federal Emergency Management Association was caught holding up disaster aid to blue states earlier this year. Less than a week ago, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin threatened not only to block federal grants but also to jail state officials in Democratic states that refuse to hand over voter registration to the Trump administration. 

In the past, states have appealed these cuts in court and won. Minnesota and California will likely sue to get their funding back, and they’ll have plenty of evidence that the White House is targeting them for vindictive reasons.  

Within days of pledging that Donald Trump’s $1.8 billion slush fund was dead, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has changed his mind.

In written answers provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee following his congressional hearing, Trump’s former personal attorney refused to rule out the possibility that taxpayer funds could, at some point, be redirected as a form of reparations to Trump’s aggrieved political allies.

“Will you issue a memorandum directing DOJ not to enter into any settlement that would result in paying money or issuing an apology to any person convicted of assaulting law-enforcement officers during the January 6 attack on the Capitol?” prompted one question.

“Every claim submitted pursuant to the Federal Tort Claims Act is reviewed on the merits and addressed by the Torts Branch of the Civil Division,” responded Blanche. “The compromise and/or settlement of any claim is made only in the best interest of the United States.”

But what Blanche chose not to answer on the Senate’s “Questions for the Record” was just as remarkable.

In one exchange, Blanche refused to expound on whether Justice Department officials had discussed potential payouts with convicted January 6ers. Blanche also refused to answer a point-blank question on whether it was “appropriate” to grant Trump and his family criminal immunity. He similarly declined to answer whether he or the Justice Department had pressured officials at the IRS to sign a settlement agreement with the president.

Of course, Blanche’s opinion doesn’t supersede that of a federal judge who found the whole enterprise wildly unlawful. Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams nixed the settlement underlying Trump’s slush fund, ruling that the settlement parties—Trump’s IRS and Trump’s attorneys—were never actually at odds when they opted to forgo the president’s $10 billion lawsuit in favor of a massive, taxpayer-funded honeypot.

“The nature of the suit itself and the conduct of the Parties and counsel from its filing make plain that this was an attempt to use the Court to provide some legitimacy to an agreement to confer immunity to people and entities affiliated with the President and to earmark billions of dollars from American taxpayers to redress grievances not defined in the law,” Williams wrote.

More than 4.5 million people across the country have lost access to federal food assistance since the passage of President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, according to a recent report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, or CBPP.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, was one of the social safety net programs gutted by Trump’s budget, which narrowed eligibility for food aid and foisted the costs associated with SNAP onto states. As a result, CBPP estimates that 11 percent of SNAP participants—including 1.5 million children—were knocked off their food assistance between July 2025 and April 2026.

The “big, beautiful bill” marked the most significant cuts in SNAP history. This included the expansion of work requirements for homeless people, veterans, and all able-bodied adults without children up to age 65, although people over age 54 were previously exempt. The bill also ended eligibility for many people with lawful immigration status and required states with high error rates to pay significantly more in benefit costs.

Some parts of the country are being hit harder than others. Arizona in particular has seen a decline of more than 50 percent, as more than 440,000 Arizonans receiving SNAP benefits have been dropped from the program in less than a year. These new cuts have snowballed with bureaucratic red tape, anxieties around error rates, and problems in the state’s SNAP offices, including cuts to staff.

Arizona’s approach to SNAP has been praised by federal officials, however, for “leading the way” in carrying out Trump’s changes and cutting “waste, fraud and abuse.”

“Arizonans losing SNAP say they are skipping meals, quarreling over food, and missing rent payments to restock pantry shelves,” The New York Times reported Monday. “For the first time, monthly visits to the state’s food banks—private charities—have exceeded enrollment in SNAP.”

In its report, the CBPP wrote that Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” poses a “great harm to families, including higher food costs, poverty, and hunger.… We expect these harms to grow as states fully implement eligibility restrictions and take actions to lower their error rates.”

But hey, at least the White House is getting a new ballroom.

President Trump is now downplaying the election fraud accusations he made in a prime-time address to the nation last week.

On Tuesday, Trump was asked by a reporter if he was planning to impose consequences on China, which he blamed for interfering in the 2020 presidential election, during his nationally televised address on Thursday. His answer was dismissive.

“Well, we talked to them about it. It took place a long time ago, I think China is maybe a little bit different today than it was then. But look, they do things, and we do things to them, I’ll be honest. We do things to them too, it’s not a one-way street. But we’ll be talking to them, yeah,” Trump responded.

It was a rather nonchalant answer, considering that Trump took over Americans’ televisions to rail against voting fraud and foreign interference in elections. He singled out China for its efforts in the 2020 election, and the White House released declassified documents that supposedly backed up Trump’s claims but in reality exposed his lies.

The files said that China attempted to sway public opinion without interfering with ballots or voting machines. Any information presented in the files didn’t support the points Trump was making in his speech. The remarks were panned for fearmongering with meager evidence, and even conservatives, including Trump’s friends at Fox News, didn’t take it seriously. Based on Trump’s remarks Tuesday, he didn’t believe his own words, either.