By Wayne Allensworth
Following President Donald Trump’s actions, social media posts, public statements, and exchanges with the press is a daunting task to say the least. Trump’s whirlwind circles from Greenland to Ukraine and the Middle East, back to Mexico, to “draining the Swamp” and there’s some new wrinkle — at least in Trump’s trolling of the Western elite and us — practically every day. I can’t imagine what working for him is like. It must be exhausting. With that in mind, and while taking under consideration that the Democrats are on the ropes, With the party’s approval ratings at a decades’-long low of 29 percent in a CNN poll, the Blob in panic, and the legacy media failing, Team Trump should set its priorities. The window of opportunity might last, or it might not. Some things — particularly at home and in the near abroad — are far more important than others. Even with Trump’s surge in popularity, America First cannot squander political capital on marginal goals.
Some points to ponder:
Russian forces have surrounded Ukrainian troops in Kursk Oblast in the Russian Federation. Ukraine President Volodomyr Zelensky’s gamble on invading Russia and attempting to trade territory in peace talks has failed. President Trump appealed to Putin to spare their lives and Putin responded by saying that if the Ukrainian troops laid down their arms and surrendered, they would be treated as prisoners of war according to international norms. As Trump himself put it to Zelensky, the Ukrainian president has no cards to play. The game is up, and Russian forces are advancing on all fronts. Restarting military aid and the flow of intelligence to Ukraine is pointless. Putin has agreed to a partial ceasefire — halting attacks on energy infrastructure — but wants more assurances that a broader agreement will be reached. He further called for a halt to military aid and intelligence support to Ukraine. The wild card in this game is the Ukrainian hard liners. There has been talk of a potential coup directed against Zelensky if he agrees to any deal with the Russians or shows any inclination to do so. Whatever happens, this is not our war. The Trump administration’s priority should be getting the United States disentangled from Ukraine. We can negotiate matters of interest with Russia independent of what happens in this war. Avoiding a clash with a nuclear superpower is the goal.
In the Middle East, Israel has broken the Gaza ceasefire, citing Hamas’s failure to release all Israeli hostages. The Israelis are launching strikes on targets in the region. Meanwhile, Trump ordered airstrikes against Houthi positions in Yemen. The Houthis are backed by Iran and have launched attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, reportedly extorting safe passage payments from ships passing through the area. The Houthis have attacked U.S. Navy ships 174 times since 2023. The United States has been backing a Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthis in Yemen for a decade. The Houthi attacks on shipping and on Israeli targets halted following the Gaza ceasefire in January, but they resumed them when the Israelis blocked humanitarian aid to Gaza earlier this month. In retaliation for U.S. strikes in Yemen, the Houthis attacked the USS Harry S Truman carrier with multiple drones and a ballistic missile, but to no avail.
The background to all this is Trump’s threatening Iran over its nuclear program and alleged plots to assassinate him. What should an America First program prioritize? No war with Iran is a priority. Any major war would jeopardize the Trump administration’s domestic agenda by empowering the Deep State and the Military-Industrial complex, expending time, energy, and political capital on issues that do not directly impact the task of crushing globalism and preserving the nation.
Unconditional U.S. support of Israel plays a large role in the current situation. It is likely impossible at this time to fully separate our national interests — like protecting shipping lanes — from the Israelis and their goals. The Lobby is that strong, not only in Congress, but also through Trump’s personal ties. The Lobby would probably like to see a U.S. war with Iran. It’s also conceivable that placating The Lobby was the price we paid for achieving other goals — a Trump who acted more even handedly in the Middle East might not have won the support of a portion of the Lobby’s backers in the U.S., including a significant portion of Trump’s electoral base. That’s reality. Apart from that, I don’t care how many foreign agitators the Trump administration deports, but we are faced with the danger of the administration equating legitimate criticism of Israel, including The Lobby’s influence in our country, with “anti-Semitism” and a “pro-Hamas” stance. MAGA can’t complain about suppression of free speech under former President Joe Biden and tolerate the same thing under Trump.
Mexico is the real external threat to American security. It’s not Russia, not Iran, not even China. Those countries can be dealt with by economic and diplomatic measures, as well as immigration policy. The flow of narcotics and mass migration to our country has come through Mexico, a narcostate whose government barely controls the capital district. Murders, mass graves, widespread corruption, thefts from energy pipelines, even train robberies in Mexico and the United States are a way of life for our next-door neighbor. It is a failed state. Mexican narcos have even used American park lands as transit points and production facilities. The Latin American gangs that have infiltrated our country passed through Mexico. The administration’s designating the cartels as terrorist organizations was long overdue. If the U.S. military wants targets, I’m sure we have reliable information on the locations of cartel facilities. The U.S. military’s job is national defense and protecting the nation from invasion should be a top priority. We have lately read that the narcos who have fired on Border Patrol officers at the border are armed with advanced weapons that the U.S. sent to Ukraine, weapons which were sold on the international market. I hope the administration learns a lesson from that. Fixing illegal immigration is only part of the problem. We do not need mass immigration, period. Ending that should be a priority as well.
In a related issue, Trump has deported Venezuelan gang members and refused to comply with a court order to bring the plane back to the US. Can you imagine? A U.S. court wants criminal aliens to be brought back to America. True, the administration’s excuse was that the plane was already in international air space, but the point has been made. The courts cannot be allowed to legislate and make policy for our country. We have a Congress and a president for that. A showdown with an out-of-control judiciary is necessary.
At home, dismantling the Deep State and strangling the globalist Blob should be the top priority. Nothing else will count in the long term without it. The administration is using the Department of Government Efficiency to expose and cut off the corruption, hidden spending, and covert subversion, including financing legacy media outlets, that the Swamp and its minions have engineered at taxpayer expense. It’s worse, much worse, than even your observer imagined. Destroying the pernicious propaganda of “critical theory” (“DEI”) that the Obama administration embedded in the bureaucracy is a very important element in the job that has to be done. Taking an axe to the bureaucracy will be messy and will inevitably harm some decent federal workers, but there is no other way to do this. The Blob is panicking, but the exposure of the gigantic money-laundering operation that is the federal bureaucracy has fueled Trump’s popularity and undercut his opponents. We will need all the political capital we can muster to finish the job and start over to rebuild a more streamlined federal government. Cutting the national debt is a priority, but that will mean holding back our all too big spenders in Congress as well. Cleaning house in the intelligence agencies and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s efforts to decouple the Food and Drug Administration from Big Pharma are very important elements in the struggle. In Kennedy’s case, we are not just attacking the symbiotic relationship (“regulatory capture”) of Big Pharma, Big Agriculture and the FDA, but the country’s future in the health of our people.
The Trump Administration plans to use trade and tariff policies to return manufacturing jobs to the U.S and open foreign markets for our goods and services. That’s of vital importance to our industrial and agricultural heartland and in creating economic opportunity for our working people to marry, have children, and build communities that have been eroded by “free trade” and the indifference, even outright hostility, of our elite class. As a corollary to that revitalization, Vice President J.D. Vance has been an eloquent spokesman for traditional morality and sex roles. The sexual revolution was a chief element of the left’s cultural revolution and, as sociologists like Charles Murray have observed, and Vance chronicled in his autobiography, the working class was hit hardest by it. Rebuilding working class families of all races is dependent on using the Bully Pulpit as well as economic and tax policy to encourage family formation.
As I noted earlier, some good signs are out there: The “Trump effect” extends beyond the man himself and his program. The decline of Christianity, for instance, has apparently halted. That implies that it can be reversed. Trump’s bombastic and combative approach can be grating, even to his supporters, but no one could have put together the America First coalition that carried him into the White House. No one else would have been audacious enough to take the Swamp on so directly. Let’s not forget the criminal negligence and duplicity of the Washington Elite that has fueled the country’s decline. We have a chance to salvage something for our children and grandchildren. Trump’s successor — perhaps Vance — can stabilize a hopefully revamped system in the future, and set future priorities. But for all of Trump’s faults and foibles, including his ADHD approach to policy, he was the only man for the job.
Chronicles contributor Wayne Allensworth is the author of The Russian Question: Nationalism, Modernization, and Post-Communist Russia, and a novel, Field of Blood. For thirty-two years, he worked as an analyst and Russia area expert in the US intelligence community.
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