Although Donald Trump has acknowledged being aware of the term “America First” and its historical context, he has nevertheless called it “a brand-new modern term. I never related it to the past.” Whether that is true or not, the fact is that the slogan is a specific throwback to a particular movement, and perhaps by coincidence — or someone whispering it in his ear — it became the brand name for his foreign policy when, in reality, he didn’t have one.
Trump, along with Stephen Miller and his then-aide Steve Bannon, managed to string together a type of isolationist doctrine in his first inaugural address, a speech that became known as “American Carnage” (or, in the words of George W. Bush “some weird s**t”). “For many decades,” he said, “we’ve enriched foreign industry at the expense of American industry, subsidized the armies of other countries, while allowing for the very sad depletion of our military. We’ve defended other nation’s borders while refusing to defend our own and spent trillions of dollars overseas while America’s infrastructure has fallen into disrepair and decay.” Over the better part of the next decade, he vowed to end America’s “forever wars.”
