With the rise of Donald Trump in the Republican Party, many on both sides of the aisle have stated that the rise of ‘America First’ sentiments necessarily signals that the ‘Bush Doctrine’ of military adventurism is on its last leg. Most notably, in 2016, Trump called the invasion of Iraq “the worst decision”. More recently, some have pointed to his now famous claim that he will end the war in Ukraine in “one day” as a clear sign of his departure from neoconservatism.
Unfortunately, Trump has proven to be something of a political chameleon. When he is running for election or reelection, he is more than happy to take jabs at the political elites who waste the lives and tax dollars of Americans every year on projects abroad. But when he is in office, Trump is more than happy to surround himself with the same political elites that he was bashing before he got into office. If I were to list out every example of Trump selling out to the neocons, this article would quickly turn into a long-form work of nonfiction. Instead, simply take a look at Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, further binding the U.S. to the apartheid regime. True believers in ‘America First’ foreign policy, like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, both agree that support for the war in Gaza is at the detriment of the United States.
Deep down, Donald Trump is a businessman with a talent for sales. He goes where the money goes and he will say whatever it takes to get there. Recently, Zionist billionaires like Miriam Adelson have spent millions trying to get Trump back into the Oval Office. Additionally, the business of the Trump family has always been real estate, and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, seems to think that there is a lot of money to be made on Gazan ‘waterfront property’. Like I said in a previous article, Donald Trump sold the American public “Pat Buchanan for the twenty-first century” but gave us “watered-down Bush” (the war criminal, not the beer) instead.
The neoconservatives know that when push comes to shove, Trump will bend the knee to big money donors and abandon any semblance of anti-imperialism. Therefore, is it any surprise that neocons like Nikki Haley and Mike Pompeo, both of whom served in high governmental positions under Trump, have fallen behind him in the 2024 election? The fact of the matter is that America cannot afford four more years of “Bush the third”. Four more years of Trump means four more years of illegal drone strikes in the Middle East, illegal assassinations, and, Presidential Medals of Freedom for Zionist billionaires.
Nevertheless, some will say that Trump was simply “manipulated” by those around him. But as President George W. Bush once said, “There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.” To accept the idea that Trump was manipulated into acting like a neoconservative time and time again, you either have to accept that Trump is the most idiotic president in American history or that he has a brain that is in worse condition than Joe Biden’s.
Still, others will say that the pick of Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate for President in 2024 is an undeniable sign that Trump is moving towards “isolationism”. But the idea that J.D. Vance is a principled supporter of ‘America First’ is simply a lie. While he might not support Ukraine, Vance revealed his true colors when he voted to split up Israel and Ukraine aid for the express purpose of ensuring more aid for the Apartheid state.
In conclusion, no amount of posturing from Donald Trump can change the fact that the majority of the party’s elites still overwhelmingly support Israel. And while Trump may have been an outsider in 2016, in the last eight years he has become one of the party elite. Don’t be fooled, the beast of American imperialism is still alive and well in the Republican Party.
J.D. Hester is an American writer born and raised in Arizona. He has previously written for Antiwar.com and CounterCurrents.org. You can find him on his Substack, Hester Unfiltered. You can send him an email at [email protected]. Follow him on X.
