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Facing growing backlash, including from figures in his own party, over U.S. involvement in foreign wars, Donald Trump is trying to rebrand the “America First” slogan he popularized.
The Trump administration’s support for Israel’s recently launched war with Iran has garnered bipartisan backlash and condemnation for a president who attempted to portray himself as a dovish alternative to the Biden administration during last year’s presidential campaign. My colleague Steve Benen published a great post highlighting how Trump vowed his administration would “stop all wars and bring a new spirit of unity to a world that has been angry, violent and totally unpredictable.” With wars raging in multiple hotspots, the president clearly isn’t succeeding on that front.
And backlash seems to be coming from the president’s supporters who bought fundamentally into the “America First” slogan (a version of which was previously adopted by pro-Nazi propagandists in the 1940s and before that by the Ku Klux Klan) and Trump’s past promises to keep America out of foreign conflicts.
Even some far-right influencers have called out Trump for failing to live up to the “America First” mantra, like former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who recently wrote that Trump is “complicit” in Israel’s war with Iran. Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene also condemned members of the MAGA movement who’ve seemed giddy over the conflict.
But the president’s response to the backlash underscores how much today’s America First movement is little more than a cult of personality centered around the president’s warped and revanchist worldview. Here’s the rebuttal Trump gave to The Atlantic in response to those who are questioning his “America First” bonafides:
‘Well, considering that I’m the one that developed ‘America First,’ and considering that the term wasn’t used until I came along, I think I’m the one that decides that,’ Trump told me. ‘For those people who say they want peace—you can’t have peace if Iran has a nuclear weapon. So for all of those wonderful people who don’t want to do anything about Iran having a nuclear weapon—that’s not peace.’
Like Trump’s claim to have invented the term “equalize” or the phrases “fake news” or “priming the pump,” his assertion that the slogan “America First” wasn’t used until he came along is blatantly wrong.
There’s also more than a little Orwellian doublespeak at play here, as the president suggests that preventing Iran from having a nuclear weapon is a precondition of peace — even if that goal requires supporting a war. This position would seem to be the inevitable justification for his acquiescence to Israel launching its attack on Iran, given the failure of his negotiating team to replace the treaty he blew up in his first term. Just like he decided that Russia and Ukraine need to “fight for a while” after his negotiators couldn’t deliver the long-promised deal between those two nations.
Nonetheless, Trump’s remark to The Atlantic shows his clear belief that “America First” means whatever he says it means and that the MAGA faithful should just roll with that no matter what.
I don’t expect the glaring contradictions in Trump’s rhetoric will lead a majority of his supporters to reject him. This is, after all, a movement that revolves around a self-described “king,” and much of it has shown a willingness to support his dictatorial whims no matter how obviously contradictory his statements and behaviors may be.
But it appears that some truly bought into the notion that “America First” meant the president would pursue peaceful diplomacy or would at least not ensnare the U.S. in new foreign conflicts. Now that it’s abundantly clear that outcome isn’t in the cards, it’ll be interesting to see whether that faction falls in line with Trump’s redefined “America First” — or finally breaks with the president.