Trump to Host Zelensky at White House Tuesday as Loomer Reverses Course on Ukraine

The Meeting

President Trump is set to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House on Tuesday, according to a White House official who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity, as reported by Euronews. Trump is scheduled to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the same day.

The timing isn't an accident. Tuesday is also the memorial service in Washington for Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who died July 11 at 71 after returning from a trip to Kyiv, according to Breitbart News. Graham had just announced he'd reached a deal with the White House on a long-delayed Russia sanctions bill before his death. He'd served in the Senate for over two decades and won his GOP primary in June with Trump's endorsement.

This won't be the first Trump-Zelensky sit-down, and the history isn't smooth. In February 2025, Trump and Vice President JD Vance clashed with Zelensky in the Oval Office in front of cameras, ending with Zelensky getting shown the door, as Breitbart News documented at the time. Since then, Zelensky has been working the relationship through Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner, trying to revive stalled peace talks with Russia.

Why Now

The Russia-Ukraine peace push had been sitting on the back burner for months while the Iran conflict dominated the administration's attention, per Breitbart's reporting. That appears to be changing. Trump recently announced the U.S. will grant licenses letting Ukraine produce its own Patriot missiles domestically, according to the Washington Examiner.

Trump allies told the Washington Examiner the president has been impressed by how fast Ukraine built up its own defense industry and its long-range drone campaign against Russian targets. A White House official told the outlet: "The President has a humanitarian heart and wants this war settled so the senseless killing ends. The President and his team have worked very hard to end the war between Russia and Ukraine, and he remains optimistic that we'll ultimately get a peace deal done."

The Senate is also expected to vote on a joint Russia-Iran sanctions bill, according to the Jerusalem Post, adding another layer of pressure on the diplomatic track heading into this week.

Loomer's Reversal

The most striking development isn't diplomatic, it's cultural. Laura Loomer, one of Trump's most influential outside allies despite never holding an official administration post, returned from a trip to Ukraine and told her millions of followers she'd been wrong about the war for years.

Loomer had long pushed the view, popular in parts of the America First wing of the GOP, that Ukraine was riddled with Nazi sympathizers and that Zelensky himself was, in her prior words reported by the Jerusalem Post, "a self-hating Nazi Jew." After touring bombed Ukrainian neighborhoods, interviewing Zelensky about his Jewish identity, and sharing what she called "a lovely Kosher dinner" with Kyiv rabbi Moshe Azman's family, she apologized.

"I admit it, I fell for Russian propaganda," Loomer wrote on X, according to the Jerusalem Post. On the broader backlash she now expects from parts of the GOP base, she wrote: "We need to have moral clarity. I don't care if people in the GOP disavow me. They will come to see how evil Russia is as they continue funding Iran with weapons to murder US soldiers as they call for President Trump to be assassinated. I am my own person. I think for myself because I am not a Russian bot."

Trump himself amplified a clip of Loomer's Zelensky interview on Truth Social, writing simply "very good!!!!" according to the Washington Examiner. A senior Trump administration official told the outlet Loomer's shift "is more than significant," adding: "I don't want to say that President Trump and Laura are totally in lockstep on every issue, but it's safe to say she has his ear. I think she has her finger on the pulse of the base in a way that many, including some in the president's inner DC circle, do not, and they find that grating."

The Base Split This Reveals

The isolationist argument is a significant one inside the GOP, not a fringe position. A large slice of Trump's coalition backed America First skepticism of Ukraine funding precisely because they didn't want another open-ended foreign entanglement funded by U.S. taxpayers, and they saw the Biden-era blank-check approach to Kyiv as exactly that. It's a legitimate fiscal and strategic argument, not just a talking point, and figures like JD Vance built political capital on it. Vance has taken credit for halting U.S. aid to Ukraine earlier this year, per the Jerusalem Post.

But the Jerusalem Post also documents how this fight has scrambled into something uglier, splitting the right largely along pro- and anti-Israel lines, with Loomer and Ben Shapiro on one side and Tucker Carlson-aligned voices on the other. Carlson conducted a widely-criticized softball interview with Vladimir Putin in 2024 and has since broken publicly with Trump and the GOP. Loomer has feuded with Carlson, Candace Owens, and Joe Rogan, often framing the disputes around her pro-Israel views.

None of the sources here document any actual change in official U.S. Ukraine policy tied to Loomer's trip. What's documented is that Trump personally boosted her interview, and that his administration's posture on the war has been drifting toward more support for Kyiv for weeks, including the Patriot missile production licenses. Whether Tuesday's Oval Office meeting produces a peace framework, a repeat of last year's blowup, or something in between remains genuinely unknown.