Kristin Tate is a Republican political strategist and contributor at Sky News. Her latest book is “The Liberal Invasion of Red State America.”
I cast my ballot for Donald Trump for president three times. I trusted him when he said the era of endless wars was over. I was reassured when he mocked the so-called foreign policy experts who dragged us into Iraq on faulty intelligence. Most of all, I believed him when he said “America First” meant rebuilding our own country before policing someone else’s. For supporters, our faith in Trump’s campaigns was rooted in the conviction that the “America First” credo was genuine and would guide his actions.
That’s why the US-Israel strikes on Iran over the weekend are such a gut punch.
US and Israeli forces bombed Iran’s military infrastructure, along with missile sites, naval assets, and leadership compounds in Tehran. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed and Trump urged Iranians to overthrow their government. There were civilian casualties in the first attack, including more than 100 killed in a strike that hit a girls’ elementary school.
Iran retaliated within hours, firing missiles and drones at US bases across the Gulf and at Israel. Six US service members have been killed since the attacks began, with the president warning more will likely follow. Oil prices surged, global markets slid, and shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz — a conduit for roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil — slowed sharply.
Last June, the White House declared that United States and allied operations had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and that “suggestions otherwise are fake news.” Now the White House says it wants to replace the regime.
The trajectory points toward deeper entanglement — Trump has said the campaign could last four to five weeks but might “go far longer than that” — and the real risk of another protracted regional war. That reality makes Trump’s political reversal all the more striking. When Trump first ran for president in 2016, he cast himself as a critic of Republican foreign policy orthodoxy. He ridiculed the architects of the Iraq War, denounced nation building, and warned against the reflexive interventionism that had dominated Washington for decades. “We will stop looking to topple regimes and overthrow governments,” he declared. He regularly condemned “warmongers” who, in his telling, sent working-class Americans to fight and die in conflicts detached from the national interest.
That skepticism of foreign entanglements, paired with a promise to rebuild at home, became central to the “America First” message. It set Trump apart not only from Democrats but from leaders in his own party, including Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, then-senator Marco Rubio of Florida, and former president George W. Bush, all of whom supported a more interventionist Republican foreign policy tradition.
Doubtless, Iran’s regime is repressive and hostile to American interests. It funds proxy terrorist groups across the Middle East to carry out attacks on US, Israeli, and regional targets, and has long pursued nuclear capabilities. But the view of Iran from the “America First” vantage point was never focused on whether the Iranian regime was virtuous. It was focused on whether US military action in Iran, and elsewhere, is worth the costs at home and the diversion from domestic problems.
On the campaign trail, Trump drew a straight line from foreign wars to America’s domestic decline. He argued that trillions spent overseas represented schools not rebuilt, factories not reopened, and bridges not repaired. He derided the idea of exporting democracy while American cities deteriorated. “We have spent $6 trillion in the Middle East,” he said in a debate with Hillary Clinton. “We could have rebuilt our country twice!” Many of his voters agreed.
The domestic condition of the United States underscores the point. Cities struggle with crime and homelessness that strain local budgets and often make public spaces unsafe for families. Deadly drugs have flooded many communities in the nation, leading to the overdose deaths of tens of thousands of Americans annually. Meanwhile, public education has faltered, with national test scores in math and reading declining sharply since the COVID-19 pandemic.
To see the extent of our nation’s economic and social decline, one only needs to drive through American cities and towns. In many communities, main streets lie hollowed out. Some are littered with garbage. Schools are dilapidated. New generations of children are growing up immersed in TikTok and internet pornography, while family structures crumble under the weight of modern pressures.
The United States struggles to run its own cities, and yet the Trump administration aims to replace the entire government of Iran.
The economic risks of a widening conflict with Iran only compound domestic failures. Say goodbye to efforts to create a better budget and pay down the nearly $40 trillion national debt to spare our children a life of debt peonage to China. None of the money being spent in Iran will be spent in the United States, except to be dispensed to the arms industry of this country.I voted for Trump three times, but if “America First” is to mean anything, it must guide action as much as it guides rhetoric. Escalating foreign conflicts at the expense of American recovery betrays the promise that inspired so many of us to vote for Trump and risks leaving the country weaker at home and abroad.