What did it take for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, neoconservative Bill Kristol, Sen. John McCain, and the mainstream media to praise President Trump? The end of the “America First” foreign policy, through 59 tomahawk missiles striking Syria.
Almost instantly, people who previously couldn’t utter the name Trump without suffering some form of allergic reaction were standing up for the man whom they had previously swore unfettered resistance. The praise came on the promise that Trump, less than 100 days in office, had a road to Damascus conversion on foreign policy.
To win the White House, Trump adopted a foreign policy that had not hit the campaign trail since Pat Buchanan. Trump’s promises to the people were to keep the United States out of unnecessary wars, end meddling in the Middle East, and put America First.
“Obviously, the war in Iraq was a big, fat mistake,” Trump said during the February 2016 debate in military-friendly South Carolina. “We can make mistakes. But that one was a beauty. We should have never been in Iraq.”
South Carolina went with Trump. The nation followed suit as Trump pledged to make allies pay their fair share of defense costs and questioned the wisdom of old, entangling alliances such as NATO.
But has the man who once had the hutzpah to stand up to a former president of his own party gone soft on his promise of America First? Is the candidate who viewed Iraq as a mistake ignoring his own advice in Syria? Will Trump’s moral outrage concerning media images of Syrian children override America’s national interests?
All indications suggest there is a White House reboot on foreign policy. In the aftermath of his Syrian bombing, Trump has promised to do more if Syrian President Bashar Assad does not toe the line and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the man who said that the Syrian people must decide the fate of Assad, is saying Assad’s regime is coming to an end.
On the other side of the globe, Trump is sending bombastic tweets to China and North Korea, promising to fix the Pyongyang problem himself if Beijing can’t find the answer. This comes as Trump moved warships to the Korean Peninsula and China moved 150,000 troops to its North Korean border.
The saber rattling from the West Wing is also coming as Steve Bannon, the man viewed by many to be the protector of Trump’s populist promises, is battling Trump’s daughter and son-in-law, Ivanka and Jared Kushner, for the policy high ground.
Ivanka reportedly had a heavy hand in convincing her father, the man who once demanded that former President Barack Obama stay out of Syria, to do his 180-degree flip on Syria. Eric Trump confirmed this suspicion.
“Ivanka is a mother of three kids and she has influence,” Eric told the Daily Telegraph. “I’m sure she said, ‘Listen, this is horrible stuff.’ My father will act in times like that.”
Watered down to its simplest form, it could be suggested that a daughter’s heartbreak was the catalyst that unraveled a campaign promise to stay out of a civil war that does not impact vital U.S. interests. And If Ivanka holds that much sway in the West Wing, is America First subject to her reaction to humanitarian disasters or, even worse, dead on arrival?
Trump has shown an uncanny willingness to reverse and reconsider his positions on key policy. He did so with abortion and marriage equality. He has proven to be a man who is open to change course, especially if he sees danger ahead.
But with North Korea a powder keg, Moscow issuing ultimatums, and Assad back to bombing, the America First window is closing. If Trump is going to be convinced to change course, he needs to hear it from supporters who are not afraid to tell the emperor he is naked.
Those who put Trump where he is today must take off their rose-colored glasses and call him out on abandoning his America First foreign policy. Where Trump once joked he could shoot someone and still have support, we, his supporters, must remind Trump that he is a conduit for policy and not a political pope.
We must remind him that loyalty and blind loyalty are not one in the same. If our loyalty remains blind we might just find ourselves led into a number of unnecessary wars we elected a president to prevent.
Joseph Murray (@realJoeMurray) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. Previously, he was a campaign official for Pat Buchanan. He is the author of “Odd Man Out” and is administrator of the LGBTrump Facebook page.
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