{"id":1542281,"date":"2025-06-17T20:20:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-18T00:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1542281"},"modified":"2025-06-17T20:20:00","modified_gmt":"2025-06-18T00:20:00","slug":"who-really-decides-what-america-first-means","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/who-really-decides-what-america-first-means\/1542281\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Really Decides What “America First” Means?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Who Really Decides What “America First” Means?<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Trump recently told\u00a0The Atlantic<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cconsidering that I\u2019m the one that developed \u2018America First,\u2019 and considering that the term wasn\u2019t used until I came along, I think I\u2019m the one that decides that.<\/strong><\/p>\n

For those people who say they want peace\u2014you can\u2019t have peace if Iran has a nuclear weapon. So for all of those wonderful people who don\u2019t want to do anything about Iran having a nuclear weapon\u2014that\u2019s not peace.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was in response to vehement opposition within MAGA over a\u00a0possible hot war with Iran<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

His remarks preceded Tucker Carlson\u00a0telling<\/a>\u00a0Steve Bannon, both of whom have enormous influence over MAGA, that such a war would \u201csee the end of the American Empire\u201d and Trump\u2019s presidency. <\/strong><\/p>\n

That prompted Trump to\u00a0respond as follows<\/a>\u00a0on social media:<\/p>\n

\u201cSomebody please explain to kooky Tucker Carlson that, \u2018IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!\u2019\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

Quite clearly, MAGA is now divided over who exactly decides what \u201cAmerica First\u201d means: Trump or top influencers who channel his base\u2019s interests.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s most zealous supporters believe that every MAGA member should \u201ctrust the plan\u201d, as\u00a0QAnon\u00a0<\/a>infamously urged, and insist that their political hero knows better than they do due to his access to the world\u2019s most classified information. By contrast, their critics \u2013 who also deeply respect Trump and are grateful that he\u2019s back in the White House \u2013 believe that he was manipulated by anti-MAGA forces during his first term, thus explaining their worries about him possibly being manipulated yet again.<\/p>\n

Regardless of whether or not the US gets involved in a possible hot war with Iran, which is what Netanyahu is\u00a0very clearly lobbying for<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>and might have expected given\u00a0reports<\/a>\u00a0that Israel can\u2019t destroy Iran\u2019s nuclear program without American bunker-buster bombs, MAGA is now divided from within. Each faction believes that the other is disloyal to the movement in their own way by correspondingly doubting its figurehead and blindly going along with everything that he says.<\/p>\n

While Trump formally leads MAGA, he only coined the movement\u2019s name and popularized its platforms that far predated his first campaign, which is why the Tucker-Bannon camp of \u201cdissidents\u201d and \u201cpurists\u201d have no qualms about challenging and even condemning him for deviating from these positions. At the same time, his most zealous supporters argue that current realities sometimes require \u201cpragmatism\u201d, \u201cflexibility\u201d, and even \u201ccompromises\u201d on these same positions in pursuit of the \u201cgreater MAGA good\u201d.<\/p>\n

Trump is convinced (whether rightly per Israeli intelligence\u2019s assessment\u00a0or<\/a>\u00a0wrongly per US intelligence\u2019s own) that Iran really is secretly trying to build nukes<\/strong>, which if true could greatly limit the US\u2019 freedom of action in West Asia and thus \u2013 as he sees it \u2013 undermine his envisaged MAGA goals.<\/p>\n

The Tucker-Bannon camp disagrees <\/strong>and is concerned not only about the costs of a hot war with Iran, but also that this is what would undermine MAGA\u2019s true (understood as domestic-centric) goals, not a possibly nuclear Iran.<\/p>\n

The real divide within MAGA isn\u2019t over Iran, but over who decides what \u201cAmerica First\u201d means, with Iran being the catalyst for bringing this long-simmering debate to the forefront. The base and those top influencers who channel their interests (and at times add their own insight) arguably define MAGA, but Trump is the only one with the power to implement it at scale, and he now believes that he knows better than them.<\/p>\n

This zero-sum divide risks irreconcilably splitting the movement if one of them doesn\u2019t relent.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nTue, 06\/17\/2025 – 16:20<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bhttps:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/political\/who-really-decides-what-america-first-means<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Who Really Decides What “America First” Means? Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack, Trump recently told\u00a0The Atlantic\u00a0that \u201cconsidering that I\u2019m the one that developed \u2018America…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1542282,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1542281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1542281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1542281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1542281\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1542282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1542281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1542281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1542281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}