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Opinion

Mr. President, What the Hell Happened to Putting America First?

President Donald J. Trump addresses a joint session of Congress on Tuesday Feb. 28, 2017.

What do Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson all have in common? They all got bogged down in foreign wars at the expense of their domestic agendas.

President Donald J. Trump ran on an “America First” platform that championed workers and opposed foreign interventions, specifically in the Middle East. But on his 76th day as commander-in-chief he ordered his first military strike, and it was on a Middle East nation with a thousand-year history of internal conflict.

What is behind this complete reversal of foreign policy toward Syria, perhaps even a reversal of the entire Trump Doctrine?

He saw some pictures, admittedly disturbing pictures of innocents–yes, women and children–suffering the horrific death that comes to victims of chemical weapons. It tugs at the heart strings, but emotions are a stupid gauge to use when measuring the wisdom of foreign policy decisions.

The world is an unforgiving place that doesn’t revere life. Children die every day. There will always be another atrocity, another genocide and another boogyman. And guess what? That’s not his damn problem, as the Americans who elected him thought he understood.

“My job is not to represent the world,” he said in his joint session to Congress. “My job is to represent the United States of America.”

Fifty-nine Tomahawk missiles fired at one Syrian airbase does not constitute a war, to be sure. But we would be deluding ourselves not to acknowledge the direction in which this administration is moving. As People’s Pundit Daily reported, loyalists like Reince Priebus and nationalist-populist like Steve Bannon are losing an internal power struggle and the President’s moderate-to-liberal family, establishment elites and swamp creatures are winning.

His job is to represent the working-class Americans who put him in the White House, who delivered the electoral votes in states neocon losers couldn’t carry against a radical leftwing America-hater who never even ran a lemonade stand.

In fact, the folly of foreign interventions during the Bush years gave us Barack Obama, the worst foreign policy failure of a president, ever. Who or what in God’s name will we get next time?

And what did this strike accomplish?

Well, President Trump finally received temporary praise from elite swamp creatures who still and will always trash him behind his back at their cushy little dinner parties. Many of these same people are praising his actions now while secretly hoping he gets the country involved in another protracted war in the Middle East.

Why? Because it will flush his domestic agenda right down the toilet.

President Trump once joked that he could shoot someone on the streets of New York City and his supporters still wouldn’t abandon him. With loyalists on their way out and supporters enraged, the President should ask himself how long it will take for his new friends to abandon him when this $h!t goes South.

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Richard D. Baris

Rich, the People's Pundit, is the Data Journalism Editor at PPD and Director of the PPD Election Projection Model. He is also the Director of Big Data Poll, and author of "Our Virtuous Republic: The Forgotten Clause in the American Social Contract."

View Comments

  • I'm starting to think America now has its first woman President; Ivanka.

    This turn of events is why you can never place your faith in men, but in God alone.

  • As one who voted for Trump, I realize I was played. I don't want the US to keep acting as the world's police force - that's what the UN is supposed to be for. He's flipped 180 on what he campaigned on and what he said in his inaugural speech!

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Richard D. Baris

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