{"id":93355,"date":"2026-07-24T18:06:35","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T23:06:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/?p=93355"},"modified":"2026-07-24T18:06:51","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T23:06:51","slug":"maga-influencer-laura-loomer-mounts-jewish-apology-tour-in-ukraine-meeting-with-zelensky-and-rabbi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/maga-influencer-laura-loomer-mounts-jewish-apology-tour-in-ukraine-meeting-with-zelensky-and-rabbi\/","title":{"rendered":"MAGA influencer Laura Loomer mounts Jewish apology tour in Ukraine, meeting with Zelensky and rabbi"},"content":{"rendered":"

By ANDREW LAPIN<\/p>\n

(JTA) \u2014 MAGA firebrand Laura Loomer, who is warring with anti-Israel figures on the right, is invoking her Judaism as she pulls an about-face on a former hobbyhorse of hers: Ukraine.<\/p>\n

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky sits down with MAGA provocateur Laura Loomer in Kyiv as Loomer shifts her views to support Ukraine’s war against Russia, July 24, 2026. (Screenshot via X)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Loomer interviewed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on a visit to the country this week, asking him about his Jewish identity and the country\u2019s antisemitism policies. She also sat down with influential rabbi Moshe Azman as Ukraine\u2019s punishing war with Russia drags into its fourth year. <\/p>\n

In a series of tweets, she apologized for her past assertions that Ukraine is \u201cfull of Nazi sympathizers,\u201d and that Zelensky was \u201ca self-hating Nazi Jew.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI admit it, I fell for Russian propaganda,\u201d Loomer, who wields considerable influence with President Donald Trump, wrote Friday after sharing \u201ca lovely Kosher dinner\u201d with Azman\u2019s family. She also visited a historic Kyiv monastery recently shelled by Russian drones and invited Zelensky to make his case for why supporting Ukraine was \u201cAmerica First.\u201d<\/p>\n

Loomer\u2019s Jewish Ukraine tour comes as the American right is splintering, largely between pro- and anti-Israel factions \u2014 pitting the likes of Loomer and Jewish pundit Ben Shapiro against those aligned with pundit Tucker Carlson. <\/p>\n

Military aid to Ukraine has served as a tension point between the hawks and isolationists since Russia\u2019s invasion in 2022. The two issues have become increasingly intertwined, with the right\u2019s loudest anti-Israel voices opposing the U.S.-Israel war against Iran and also projecting weariness around supporting Ukraine. <\/p>\n

Vice President JD Vance, whose language on Israel and Jewish issues has alarmed some Jewish leaders, took credit for halting U.S. aid to Ukraine earlier this year. Vance\u2019s associate Carlson, who has recently turned on Trump and broken with the Republican Party, conducted a softball interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2024. The U.S. Senate will vote on a new joint Russia-Iran sanctions bill next week.<\/p>\n

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U.S. President Donald Trump (R) meets with Volodymyr Zelensky, President of Ukraine (L) for bilateral talks at Be\u015ftepe Presidential Compound during the NATO Summit on July 08, 2026 in Ankara, Turkey. (Win McNamee\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Trump himself exhibited closeness with Putin during his first term and, together with Vance, chastised Zelensky during a White House meeting last year. But his administration has indicated a recent willingness to try to end the war on terms sympathetic to Ukraine, and the two leaders are scheduled to meet in the White House next week.<\/p>\n

Loomer, too, formerly exhibited pro-Russia tendencies, including writing for the Russian-owned English-language outlet RT. More recently, she has feuded with other right-wing media figures, including Carlson, Candace Owens and Joe Rogan, often citing her pro-Israel views as the reason for the falling-out. Unlike a growing number of pundits on the right, she has also continued to cheer on the war with Iran even as its support has sunk across party lines and other commentators have sought to cast blame onto Israel.<\/p>\n

Loomer has also used inflammatory rhetoric toward Muslims, calling on Trump to pass \u201ca Muslim Ban as it was intended to be\u201d after New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a \u201cwar criminal\u201d earlier this week. <\/p>\n

In her Zelensky interview, filmed at the Ukrainian presidential palace and released in full on Friday, Loomer tried to play partisan politics. She unsuccessfully urged him to call Trump the best president in history and told him that his 2024 visit to a Pennsylvania munitions factory alongside Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro was \u201cone of the reasons why a lot of Americans came to dislike you.\u201d (Shapiro, who is also Jewish, was at the time a prominent campaign surrogate for then-Vice President Kamala Harris, who was running for president.)<\/p>\n

Loomer sought a Jewish connection with the president, telling him, \u201cI\u2019m Jewish, you\u2019re Jewish. We share that in common.\u201d Zelensky, who rarely publicly comments on his Jewish heritage, highlighted that Ukraine earlier this year passed a law criminalizing antisemitism.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s illegal, antisemitism. We did it during my presidency,\u201d he said. The new law, a strengthening of a 2021 law, institutes fines and possible prison terms for those found guilty of hatred or discrimination on the basis of Jewish identity. <\/p>\n

Zelensky, who has long enjoyed largely unqualified support among Democrats and liberal Americans, praised Loomer\u2019s visit and change of heart. He, Azman and other Ukrainian figures who met with Loomer have sought to cultivate increased favor with Trump during a particularly uncertain phase of the war. <\/p>\n

Loomer told the president her main goal was to counter \u201cRussian propaganda\u201d she believed was prominent among American podcasters, including allegations of links between Ukraine\u2019s military and Naziism.<\/p>\n

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Laura Loomer arrives at Philadelphia International Airport on The Trump Organization’s plane ahead of the presidential debate, Sept. 10, 2024. (Julia Beverly\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cI really opposed sending my taxpayer dollars to Ukraine because I really believed that you had an army, the Azov Battalion, full of Nazis,\u201d she told Zelensky, referencing an infamous Ukrainian military wing that has continued to attract scrutiny, both before and after the 2022 invasion, for its links to neo-Nazis and other extremists. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe are not Nazis,\u201d Zelensky told her, later urging her to visit Babyn Yar, the memorial to the \u201cHolocaust by bullets\u201d perpetrated by Nazis on Ukrainian soil with the help of local collaborators in 1941. In 2022, shortly after the invasion, a Russian bombing near the memorial prompted Zelensky to make an appeal to the global Jewish community for support.<\/p>\n

Loomer, who is notorious for credulously reporting explosive allegations against her political enemies, said she accepted Ukraine\u2019s claims to now be Nazi-free. One of the deciding factors, she said, was meeting 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. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe Rabbi told me his dead Jewish son didn\u2019t fight alongside Nazis,\u201d Loomer tweeted, adding, \u201cI can assure Amercians [sic] that Jews are safer in Ukraine than they are in Mamdani\u2019s New York City!\u201d (Azman has also praised the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riots by Trump supporters, celebrating them for \u201cprotesting mass election fraud\u201d and comparing them to the Maidan, the 2014 Ukrainian protest movement that ousted a pro-Russia president.)<\/p>\n

Most diaspora Jews and Jewish organizations have backed Ukraine since the invasion and have decried Putin\u2019s initial assertion that his invasion was intended to \u201cdenazify\u201d the country. Loomer has now joined their ranks, hoping to marry that support to her own ideological identity as a Jewish right-winger in an era where the president she has long championed is losing some influence.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe won\u2019t have Trump forever,\u201d she wrote Tuesday, \u201cand the axis of evil is moving fast.\u201d<\/p>\n

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