Trump’s
'America First' is now just imperialism
It’s clear Trump was never serious about America First.
Just as he was never serious about releasing the Epstein files. Or making
America affordable again. Or replacing Obamacare. But what do his voters think?
By S. E. Cupp
Jan
8, 2026, 7:16am CST
U.S. President Donald Trump dances Tuesday after
delivering remarks at the House Republican Party member retreat at the Kennedy
Center in Washington.
In
early 2025, before Donald Trump was even sworn into office, he sent a plane
with his name in giant letters on it to Nuuk, Greenland, where his son, Don
Jr., and other MAGA allies preened for cameras and stomped around the
mineral-rich Danish territory that Trump had been casually threatening to
invade or somehow acquire like stereotypical American tourists — like they
owned it already.
“Don
Jr. and my Reps landing in Greenland,” Trump wrote. “The reception has been
great. They and the Free World need safety, security, strength, and PEACE! This
is a deal that must happen. MAGA. MAKE GREENLAND GREAT AGAIN!”
Upon
returning, one of Trump’s so-called reps, an influential MAGA podcaster,
told his audience that it was absolutely imperative that America acquire
Greenland. Why?
“It makes America dream again, that we’re not just this
sad, low-testosterone, beta male slouching in our chair, allowing the world to
run over us. It is the resurrection of masculine American energy. It is the
return of Manifest Destiny.”
Wow.
What an endorsement.
The
idea that America is, essentially, owed Greenland as ordained by God, and that
acquiring it was going to accomplish nothing short of resurrecting both the
American dream and “masculine American energy” was quite the preposterous
promise. But it was made in earnest by someone Trump voters loved and trusted:
Charlie Kirk.
It was
a huge shift in a very short period of time from the way Kirk and other MAGA
acolytes had been talking. Kirk had long bought into Trump’s “America First”
marketing pitch, and he often used it as a cudgel against all sorts of liberal
ills.
“American
citizens should come first,” he’d insist, arguing for a total halt to
immigration at times. “The last thing America needs right now is a new war,”
he’d argue as it pertained to foreign policy and meddling in other countries’
affairs. He believed the United States was founded as an America First
Christian nation. And he warned that a
vote for Kamala Harris was a vote for WWIII.
As
Trump touted an end to “forever wars” while on the campaign trail, Kirk and
others in the manosphere — including previously Trump-skeptical media
personalities — decided America First was Trump’s calling card, his raison
d’être, his most compelling doctrine.
Gone
were the days of George W. Bush’s cowboy neoconservatism — real men minded
their own business. And if you couldn’t abide the other more sordid stuff —
say, the fact that Trump was a convicted criminal — putting an end to America’s
interventionist foreign policy should trump it all.
That
was the pitch to voters made for years by MAGA influencers who promised nothing
was more morally imperative than America retreating from the world.
Until
it wasn’t.
Abandoning MAGA principles
Kirk
was hardly alone in flipping the script to suddenly defend the thing they’d
been told would never happen. Now, they were telling us, intervention,
threatening to invade sovereign nations, maybe even getting involved in some
foreign wars, and even Trump’s tariffs — an economic interventionist policy —
were not only OK, they were crucial to making America great again. (And men,
too.)
The
shameless abandonment of principles is so utterly comical in its scope and
speed, calling it “hypocrisy” almost gives it too much intellectual heft. They
simply don’t care.
This
week Sen. Rick Scott, R-Florida, is boasting that
Trump, in addition to toppling the Nicolás Maduro regime in Venezuela, will
also see to the toppling of the Cuban government “this year,” after spending
years touting Trump’s
America first agenda.
Sen.
Lindsey Graham, another of Trump’s America First foot soldiers, is now brazenly warning the
leader of Iran that Trump is going to kill him — “Change is coming to Iran.”
After lambasting just two
months ago our “endless cycle of regime change,” Tulsi Gabbard, the U.S.
director of National Intelligence, is now offering “kudos” to the Trump
administration for the capture of Maduro in a constitutionally questionable
operation that ended with Trump insisting “we’re in charge” now.
These
people were either never serious about America First, ending forever wars, and
minding our business, or they are so wholly owned by Trump that his unhinged
whims just matter more.
But as
he threatens to take Greenland and Canada and invade Colombia and Mexico and
Cuba, it’s very clear Trump was never serious about America First. Just as he
was never serious about releasing the Epstein files. Or making America
affordable again. Or draining the swamp. Or replacing Obamacare. Or myriad
other slick slogans he pitched to get elected.
But
are his voters serious about America First? While MAGA falls in line to defend
Trump’s imperialist warmongering and oil-grabbing, many of his voters did not
sign up for this. Midterms are around the corner. We’ll know their answer soon
enough.
S.E.
Cupp is the host of “S.E. Cupp Unfiltered” on CNN.
