Will Laura Loomer Save Ukraine?

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1:35so ken i think of you as a laura loomer expert is that fair of me i mean apparently that is the case ken bensinger is a reporter over at the new york times i'm imagining like the odd couple theme song playing right now Yeah, you know, it's funny. The other day she joked on the phone with me that we should both quit our jobs, although she doesn't have a job to quit in that sense, but I should quit my job and we could start a consultancy together. But I don't think that's in the cards for me. Yeah. A week or two ago when you heard Laura Loomer was in Ukraine, what did you think? I mean, I thought it was interesting because, you know, it's well known that she has been extremely critical of Ukraine.

2:23Had she told you she was going? No, I should clarify that we're not really besties. She doesn't tell me everything she does in her life. Ken just wrote a big article about this junket of Laura Loomer's in Ukraine. What it means for MAGA, what it means for the war. On the off chance you do not know who Loomer is, she's a far-right media personality. A proud Islamophobe. Extremely online. Prior to 2025, she was best known for handcuffing herself to the headquarters of Twitter. to protest her ban from the platform. Her account was eventually unblocked, of course. Bizarrely, in the second Trump administration, she's become a major advisor to the president.

3:05Anyway, back to Ukraine. Can I read you a list of things Laura Loomer said about Ukraine? Yeah, sure. Like she said it's full of Nazis. She's called President Volodymyr Zelensky a jihadist apologist and also a dictator. And a fake Jew. Yeah, it's a lot. It's unsubtle. She's basically taken Vladimir Putin's side in the Russia-Ukraine conflict for a number of years. And then last week, she's posting a sit-down interview with Volodymyr Zelensky. Yeah, very surprising change of events. I'll tell you what went through my head as soon as I learned that she was going was that this has a lot to do with Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens.

3:50Do you mean like she senses an opening in the field? I'm not sure it's quite that market-driven and more personal-inimist-driven. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Like this is a personal beef played out in international diplomacy. Well, so here's the thing, though. I hear what you're saying, but it seems like Ukraine really wanted Laura Loomer there. They rolled out the red carpet. She met with Volodymyr Zelensky for 40 minutes, did an interview with him, and with the new defense minister. She dined with the country's chief rabbi. They even took her to an animal shelter because she's very into animals.

4:31As much as Laura Loomer may be there to beef, Ukraine seemed to be here for it. 100%. Let's remember that this is a fight for Ukraine's life, right? Ukraine sees this war as existential. This is not being fought abroad. This is being fought on their territory. And they need to figure out a way to survive. And a big part of that has to do with making sure that they get support from the West. And key to that, we've learned over the last few years, is currying favor with the Trump administration. How much sway does she have, though? Well, I mean, you know, very famously at this point, notoriously at this point in April of 2025, right?

5:07She gets a call from Trump or calls Trump and says, I don't like some of the people that are working for you or who've been hired for this new administration. And I'd like to come and talk to you about it. And she is in the Oval Office reading off names of people in the administration that she thinks are bad for one reason or another, and six of them get fired. So I think that's pretty influential.

5:32Firing a discrete list of people is a lot less complicated than supporting a war. The jury's still out on whether Laura Loomer has moved the needle on what Trump's going to do about Ukraine. But what we do know is that she's in a select group of people who was able to get Trump's ear enough for him to pay attention. There's so many other people who can't even get in the room with Trump who can't even really. Pardon me. Sorry about that. You want to silence it just so that it doesn't ding again. That was Laura Loomer. Was it really? Yep. What's she saying, Ken? She wants print copies of the article.

6:05She wants to frame it. Today on the show, why Laura Loomer's trip to Ukraine was actually a big deal. Maybe. I'm Mary Harris. You're listening to What Next. Stick around.

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10:07Can you just give me the briefest of updates on where we are with the Ukraine war? Because I think it's helpful context to provide to this visit by Laura Loomer. Yeah. So to be very clear, I'm not a Ukrainologist. I'm not an expert on it. But essentially, you know, this is a war that started in February 2022. We're still in it. It was a war that Russia thought it would steamroll to victory in a matter of weeks. And instead, it's four and a half years later, and it's still grinding out. the casualty counts um if they're to be believed are horrendous um on both sides but particularly the russians which have um and sort of turned the front line into something of a human meat grinder uh for for russians conscripts right and there was i think an atlantic piece recently that estimated at the time between um someone being brought into the russian military and dying in the front was something like two or three months on average.

11:01Just horrendous. These people are being sent to die. And they're bringing in people from other countries that are associated with Russia that want to fight for them and just doing everything they can to continue fighting this war. Yeah. And Applebaum wrote this article for The Atlantic. And the headline was Ukraine is not losing. Russia is not winning. The implication being like, huh, Ukraine's doing better here than we thought. And especially because they've been able to be innovative in terms of how they fight. They've been able to like sail drones into Moscow, which, you know, it's, as you said, four and a half years in, but still, that's a pretty major innovation.

11:40Yeah, I mean, this has also been an incredible frontline of the technological sort of vanguard for, you know, how war is going to be fought in the future, right? This is drone headquarters and Ukraine and Russia are fighting the war in a great degree, an increasing degree with drones. And Ukraine has been a huge innovator to the point that Ukraine experts are now teaching American experts on drone warfare and helping improve our technology and also sort of consulting on how, for example, to defend US military assets in the Gulf region against Iranian drones, which, because everything is connected are also technology that Russia has been barring from Iran to attack Ukraine.

12:22So Ukraine knows about Iranian drones because Russia uses Iranian drones. So it's all weirdly sort of interconnected in awkward and interesting ways. And what's the US-Ukraine relationship? Because when Biden was president, the relationship was very enmeshed, right? There was really good intelligence sharing. It was essentially like people working together to fight this war. I get the sense it's not that enmeshed now. Yeah. I mean, if this is, you know, a really good example is that Trump put these negotiators, Witkoff and Kushner, to sort of supposedly fix this and all other conflicts in the world.

13:01And as a good symbol of why, of like how rocky that relationship is, they have been to Moscow numerous times. They have never been to Kiev. Amazing that Loomer went first. Yeah, that Loomer went before the actual negotiators. Now, you can point out that Kushner and Wyckoff, neither of them are actual diplomats. They're both real estate guys, but they haven't been. They've certainly been to the Gulf a bunch of times. They've been to Oman and they've been to other places down there to Pakistan to negotiate, but they have not been to Kiev. That seems really, if you want a single fact to point out how bad that relationship is or how imperfect it is.

13:37I think that's a good one. I mean, interestingly, you talked to a guy named Steve Moore, who straight up said, Ukraine looks like it's winning right now. And to him, it creates this opening to try to shift the relationship with Washington, because Trump likes a winner. Yeah, and he and so more is among a number of people who have set up nonprofits and other groups that are trying to kind of sway public opinion, swayed the main, the main public opinion, the big man, Donald Trump's opinion. And they're doing, they're trying some innovative ways to do that. You could think of it as the drone warfare of diplomacy, which is instead of sort of sending infantry in the normal way to do it and shooting off howitzers, you're going to try different approaches.

14:23You're going to take that. Like sending Laura Loomer? Like sending Laura Loomer. Although I want to be clear, Steve Moore did not send Laura Loomer. He was not behind that. But other, you know, getting billboards, ceding social media with messages that Putin is a loser or that Russia is losing a war, it should have won. Yeah, Stephen Ward literally put a billboard saying Putin is a loser. Yeah. And that's because Trump doesn't like losers. And the whole thinking was we need to get inside his head and convince him that he wants to be in the sides of a winner, right? I mean, you could argue that what Zelensky really should do is give Trump a peace prize, a golden peace prize and that might finally bring him over the the fifa technique um so you say that stephen moore did not pay for laura loomer to go to ukraine do we know who did um we have a sense but unfortunately it's not public information we we don't know exactly um who it is but there is a um as described by by ms loomer there is a uh u.s based non-profit founded by an american who has Ukrainians in their family who has been pushing to change public opinion about Ukraine.

15:35And that person was connected to Loomer in May and proposed that she go over there and that this person would organize the whole trip and set up the meetings. Because you can imagine someone like Laura Loomer who doesn't speak Ukrainian, has never been there. It would be difficult to set up a whole trip, organize how to get there wouldn't know how to begin. So it would be a lot easier if someone would set that all up for you. And also - A lot cheaper too. Yeah. Find someone to pay for your driver when you're in Ukraine and find a videographer to film you and pay for security and all that kind of stuff.

16:08It's a lot cheaper and a lot easier that way. So that's how that was organized. I will say the role of someone like Stephen Moore was that in June, there was a different trip to Ukraine for different media type figures to learn about it. not one that I think was designed to change public opinion directly, but to inform people about how to cover Ukraine potentially, or to do documentaries or to do TV programs or news programs about it. And a guy who works for Laura Loomer, who does PR for her, and some producing went over there and met Stephen Moore there. And they talked about sort of how to cover it and that sort of thing.

16:45So kick the tires. This is a robust effort, I should say, where it's like, we're investing in like sending people associated with Laura Loomer and then finding someone who's going to invest in sending Laura Loomer herself. Like this is multiple weeks, months, and like money. This is an investment people are making to move the needle here. And before we get too far sort of down the rabbit hole of Laura Loomer and her change of heart here about Ukraine, I do just want to say Laura Loomer is still Laura Loomer. Like while she was in Ukraine, she tweeted out or posted somewhere one thing i really love about ukraine is i haven't seen a single muslim here it's so refreshing so just you know let's let's just all hold that in our hearts as we have this conversation it's important as many people sent me that tweet and it's it is completely true to herself right like no matter what what she's doing or what she's talking about she's going to find a way to bash muslims um she and i've had she and i've had multiple conversations about it and it is something she won't move on and seems unashamed of being labeled a bigot when it comes to Muslims.

17:51She just doesn't have a problem with that. Yeah. So she interviewed Zelensky. Was there any breaking news there? I don't think there's anything major. I think he's pretty polished about that kind of stuff. To me, the biggest breaking news is that Donald Trump blasted the interview out to his followers, which seemed to be like a tacit endorsement. It It was basically a co-sign. Correct. And to hear Laura's telling of it, she posted it online and then she called up Trump twice. And in one of those, she mentioned the clip and said, can I send it to you or get it in front of your eyes? And he said, sure.

18:24And she said very soon thereafter is when he posted it. So she didn't just create the content. She also sort of pushed it on Trump and he took the bait and reposted it, which in a sense, mission accomplished. Right. But that was probably the main goal of the entire trip was to get something like that to happen. And, you know, she made that call. She had it ready for him and he posted it. So that's a win. I do think it's interesting to listen to what Laura Loomer is saying about Ukraine, because I think it gives some hints as to how some kind of pivot to more robustly supporting Ukrainians in this war could be justified.

19:02like um Laura Lumer talked a lot about the drones uh because Ukraine has become so good at using drones you know other countries are asking for their help like the UAE Saudi Arabia they've asked Ukraine to please like share their technology and to me it's an important pivot because it is pivoting Ukraine away from being a pitiable country asking for charity, like we are in a tough spot, help us please, Mr. Trump, to we are a strong country with something to offer to you and we deserve investment, United States of America. Do you see that too? Yeah, that's a really smart and interesting take. And I think that's right.

19:50I think that one of the reasons that MAGA sort of has been against, and to some extent Trump, have been against supporting Ukraine is this idea that why should we just doing a charitable act of helping them? If they can't help themselves, why is that our problem? And that America first foreign policy means helping America. And what does this give us to give them money or munitions or anything like that? What do we get out of it? But but, you know, there's so much talk now about Ukrainian drone technology and Ukrainian technologists coming here and scientists coming here and teaching us to make better drones and helping us fight off Iran and all that kind of stuff.

20:27And I think you're right. I think the idea that there's an exchange now that Ukraine gives us something in exchange for us giving them support is a much more palatable kind of thing for for Trump and MAGA world to consider. Then it's a business deal. And remember, of course, Trump loves deals. If anything can be described as a deal, then he wants it, right? If it's who gives away their money, fools give away their money would be a way to describe the Trump aesthetic. But fools get something to change their money is a deal. And like Ukraine has tried this before, which is so interesting, because they tried it with a rare earth minerals.

20:59They're like, OK, we'll give you access to rare earth minerals. But I feel like this is a more interesting play to me because it's really about the intelligence and learned experience of the people themselves in Ukraine. It's not just like taking this mineral from us. It's not extraction in that way. It's like, no, take us seriously. Well, that also was, I think, a bit, had a whiff of extortion about it as well. I'm not sure that the idea for the rare earth minerals originated from Kyiv. I think that was the US saying, hey, if you want us to support you, give us all your resources, give us your future.

21:37And by give, I mean, we're going to take it away from you. otherwise we'll let you die in the vine. I think that's also a tough sell to the Ukrainian people, right? I mean, to say in order to survive, we have to sort of gut many of our resources and give them away for a song is a tough sell. No one wants to be in an extractionary relationship like that. Yeah, right. I mean, look at the history of colonialism. It doesn't work out well. And you know, there's something really interesting, which is one could ponder in your construct of an idea about this. What would happen if there was not the war in Iran?

22:05If the US wasn't being attacked by Iranian drones, if the U.S. hadn't attacked Iran and now suffering to some degree from drone attacks, whether Ukraine's expertise in that specific kind of drone and on drone warfare in general would be as palatable or as sellable to the U.S. as it is now. But Ukraine is being opportunistic and smart and they're saying, well, what is it we can offer to the U.S. that will make them, you know, like us more and want to be more supportive of it? I think if it is indeed that way, I think it's kind of genius. I think it's very smart to figure out something that we want and convince us that it's a good trade.

22:45We'll be right back after a quick break.

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24:30After Laura Loomer was in Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky came to Washington because Lindsey Graham passed away. His funeral happened. He went to the White House. Did anything tangible come of that after all of this sort of PR machination? I think it's a little early to tell, right? I mean, I think that the passing of Lindsey Graham was an important moment for Ukraine because he was such an ally and such a supporter. A lot of people talk about there being kind of a vacuum really i mean like lindsey graham was a big supporter he reportedly told people like i can't die now because i need to go fix ukraine and it's like and was like visiting a ukrainian uh arms or drones factory just right like days before he died right and which led people like laura loomer to speculate that he was poisoned by russia or that you know it was an assassination this sort of thing which is i mean there's certainly no evidence to support that as of yet But people thought, well, maybe Loomer is the person, right?

25:29Maybe she's a person who could step in the vacuum that Lindsey Graham occupied, someone to be a very strong supporter of Ukraine. So maybe she's that person. Ukraine clearly thinks it needs someone like that. So I think it was savvy and important of Ukraine to send Zelensky or Zelensky to send himself to the funeral and to be there and to meet with Trump. Now, we don't know. I think the meeting certainly went better than the prior White House visit to Zelensky. He was not upgraded or asked to be more grateful. Right. But it's also important to note that Trump continues to say nice things about Vladimir Putin.

26:04Well, and, you know, after promising he was going to allow Ukraine to build Patriot missile systems, Donald Trump seems to have reneged on that offer. Yeah, or at least put a real pause on it, right? Like, we don't know what's going to happen. There's still on the seesaw. Yeah, right. And we, Trump is still, they're still proposing sanctions on Russia at the same time that they're saying nice, that Trump is saying nice things about Russia. So I don't think it's clear that the war, the PR war or the swaying of Trump war has been won yet. And that seems to be a really necessary step for Ukraine to keep it going.

26:42I think there is going to be this problem if at some point the resources could run out with more support. You know, Now, as I was watching how lavishly Laura Loomer was received in Ukraine, I thought of something else entirely, which is an interview I did years ago with a Chinese dissident who was living in the United States, a democracy advocate. his name is Samuel Chu and he had essentially done this calculus in his mind where he was being very open about how much he was courting the Trump administration because he knew he needed U.S. support and he was kind of willing to do what it took and he was like yeah that's politics and I thought about that because I'm not sure how that gamble actually paid off in the end for this advocate.

27:38What happened to him? I don't know. Yeah, like, I literally don't know. But I look at our relationship with China and our I don't see us advocating for democracy, advocates in Hong Kong right now. Do you know what I mean? Like, I don't I don't see the United States taking that stand, which is I think what this person would want. And I think about Zelensky, right? Like when you're courting Donald Trump, I just don't know what you can rely on. And yet I, same as you, don't see another way through this for them. I mean, the China one's interesting. I hadn't pondered this before, but what is going well with China in the US right now?

28:18And it's commercial stuff, right? Like giving them AI chips and letting them sort of buy things from us and do commercial stuff. And to think back what you said earlier about drone expertise. Like maybe the correct way to think about what works with this administration is to frame everything as a commercial relationship. And to the extent that Ukraine can can can sell itself as a commercial partner of the U.S. rather than some democracy partner, rather than some partner of freedom is maybe the smart play. And maybe the smart play is to say, look, forget about these great ideals or things like that.

28:52That's so 20th century. Let's just talk about making money out of this or, you know, sort of getting some kind of financial or fiscal advantage for the U.S. that otherwise wouldn't be obtainable. What a cold vision of the United States. Tell me I'm wrong. I mean, tell me that the U.S. isn't sort of deal making first these days. You know, what do we do we decide we need to depose Maduro in Venezuela if they didn't have that much oil there? I don't I don't think a serious person would say that was the case. And and I think the counterpoint to that is as as as much as this administration dislikes Cuba and as much as it's sort of bleeding it dry and not letting it even have oxygen.

29:34There aren't Apache helicopters and Blackhawks going in the night to take out their leadership. Right. Because they don't have any resources. There's not a lot of commercial value to Cuba the way there is for Venezuela. So I see that most of the calculations this administration makes are framed around the idea of what is a financial argument? What's the justification from a business point of view of why we would do this? Yeah. You talked about how when you heard that Laura Loomer was going to Ukraine, you thought of it as probably related to her battles with other members of the MAGA universe, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens.

30:20strikes me those people are not moving when it comes to Ukraine. Do you think Ukraine is going to try to move them? What do you think is going to happen there? Because Laura Loomer is just one person. She's a person who's highly placed, but she's only one person. She's only one person. But as I said earlier, she's a person who talks to Donald Trump. I don't think I know for a fact Candace Owens doesn't talk to Donald Trump really at all anymore. Tucker does. But we saw Tucker tried really hard to prevent Trump from attacking Iran and failed. Right. I mean, he he said and noted it that he called multiple times, like three times or something, maybe even visited in person.

31:05I think he flew to Washington to meet Trump and try to convince him not to invade Iran. and he did it anyway. So it doesn't seem like he has the influence that he once did or even the influence that Laura Loomer has these days. And so I don't know. It certainly would be interesting to see Ukraine trying to recruit their point of view to get them over to their side. I haven't heard of any efforts to do so. And they may be simply writing them off as lost causes and things that they wouldn't worry about and trying to find other Loomers on their side, people who could be brought around to being sympathetic to Ukraine.

31:36So again, if you're trying to think in the sort DHS model of this, it might in fact be very calculated on the part of people supporting Ukraine to target Lumira as someone that they thought could be brought around to their side. They see she's fighting with Tucker. They see she's fighting with Candace. They see that this division that we're increasingly seeing on the right over Israel and Iran could actually be played to their advantage, right? If Ukraine positions itself on the side that supports Israel, on the side that supports sort of the money class of the GOP, then maybe they can win that battle.

32:16And if they lose sort of the vanguard young Republicans who increasingly are skeptical of U.S. foreign policy, that's fine because those people currently don't occupy the White House. And it might be a safe bet to write those off and to further sort of shunt them off to the side and focus on those who they think are winnable. Yeah. I mean, let's say Laura Loomer does successfully use her influence to sell Donald Trump on getting more involved in Ukraine, supporting Ukraine more openly. What would happen next? Because it just seems to me Donald Trump has spent the last year and a half essentially setting his relationship with Europe on fire.

33:06Historically, we've worked with Europe when it comes to a situation like Ukraine. Sounds like you're saying, yeah, that's not how this would go in this version. I mean, wouldn't you agree? It's hard to predict what happens with this administration. And And, you know, we're at war, we're not at war. It's a ceasefire, it's not a ceasefire. When is a ceasefire, not a ceasefire? When I say it is not a ceasefire, but it is. And I think that would apply to something like Ukraine as well. I think that, I don't think we would get to a moment where Ukraine could say, okay, we can breathe easy. The next six months or a year or two years of support and funding are secured.

33:42It's going to be a constant fight. I think that's how it is. I don't think you can ever count on, you know, on anything. There's no chickens to be counted until they're not only hatched, but in the country and sitting in warehouses that you can use. And that's the only way that they can do it. And I think just because you get one moment of support, you might lose it next. Lindsey Graham dies. You better find a new advocate quickly because there's plenty of people who would have the president's ear on the other side. Don't count your chickens until they hatch. Don't count your chickens until they're grown up, plucked, and sitting in a pot in your stove.

34:16Yeah, maybe on your fork, going toward your mouth, right? I think that's how you have to do it if you're Ukraine, because I just don't think this is a very capricious kind of administration. That's one man's views. I don't think it's being overstated to say that this is a one man show, right? There's all these people in the administration. There's lots of minor decisions made, but the big things have to go through Trump and he has to be on the side of them. Ken, I'm really grateful for your time. Thanks for coming on the show. Thank you, Mary. It was a pleasure. Ken Bensinger covers the intersection of media and politics over the New York Times.

34:54And that's our show. What Next is produced by Rob Gunther, Evan Campbell, Madeline Thames-Ducharme, and Patrick Fort. Paige Osborne is our senior supervising producer here at What Next and at What Next TVD. Mia Lobel is the executive producer of podcasts here at Slate. Ben Richmond is our senior director of podcast operations. And I'm Mary Harris. go track me down on Blue Sky. Say hello. I'm Matt Mary Harris. Thanks for listening. Catch you back here next time.

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